Pursue Holiness: Patience and Faithfulness

Seeds die, falling from the fruit into the hand of the farmer who sows them back into the soil. Nourished in the hidden place, seeds awaken and shoot roots out into the soil. From there, stalks grow upward, out of the darkness and into the actual sunlight where they strengthen and mature. And bear fruit. 

There’s an order to the growth of fruit. Seeds don’t immediately become pumpkins. And neither do we automatically become patient, faithful people the minute we’re planted in Christ. However, we are meant to ‘bring forth fruit’ as His followers, and we do so by rooting ourselves in Him and living from His love.  

And so, it all begins with the soil of our hearts, which needs to be cultivated, made ready to receive the Word of God and the work of the Spirit. When we become “the ones who have heard the Word in an honest and good heart, and hold it fast, and bear fruit with perseverance” , we enter into the process of spiritual growth, and our lives flourish for the Father (Luke 8:15 NASB). All our “hearing, understanding, clinging to, and persevering in the Word culminates in a multiplied harvest.”¹ 

In other words, we bear fruit not because of our own cleverness but because we remain rooted in Christ and receptive to all that God gives and reveals.¹ 

Bearing fruit, such as patience and faithfulness, requires an active ‘remaining’ as well as an unrelenting belief that with Jesus in us, we can cling to our trust in Him with a power beyond our own strength. In Christ, we can feel anything and still respond to others with loving patience; we can face anything and remain faithful to the One in whom we put all our hope and trust. 

Bearing Patience

Even as a small girl, I recognized something in my mother that I did not possess: patience. I have an early memory of standing in a shoe store to get yet another pair of dance shoes, and my mother having to go back out to the car to get something for me. There was no exasperated huff, not even the slightest eye roll from the woman who carried so much, who did so much. 

I saw patience for what it was long before I had words for it. Spiritual. Supernatural. In other words, godly patience is beyond our natural ability. It’s a fruit of the Spirit that ushers into our hearts a “calm self-restraint,” a composure that brings out the capacity for acceptance even in the midst of delays and irritations.²  

The Greek word for patience, makrothymia, expresses a restraint that is God-centered and focused mostly on “people, timing, and emotional control.”² Far from mere passivity, ‘patience’ is a “purposeful waiting that preserves righteousness” while seeking the good of others, which is to say it is holy and good – and we cannot self-generate this fruit.² It comes only from the Spirit.

Some have viewed patience, or longsuffering, as weakness, but in the original language and in the context of Scripture, believers are “strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” (Colossians 1:11). We are empowered for patience. We are filled supernaturally with Holy Spirit resilience against all that impatience pushes out of us, be that eye-rolling or retaliation. 

When communities of people – whether families or friends or churches – live from the Spirit-empowered fruit of patience, we bear with one another in love (Ephesians 4:2). We discover a power and ability to live in unity, not because we suddenly all think and act alike but because Holy Spirit gives us the power to forgive offenses, to see others as Jesus does, and to give space and grace for growth – in others as well as in ourselves.  

As one who has never been given to ‘waiting well’, I most deeply resonate with the idea that patience can be boiled down to that one word: waiting.³ In a world where waiting is a lost art, where we have grown used to getting everything immediately – fast food, same-day grocery deliveries, instant text responses – patience is hard to come by. Lengthy lines or test results, heavy traffic or the long wait for a spouse can push us to the brink of explosive reactivity or despair because we have trained our brains against waiting. 

So when we think about patience as a fruit of the Spirit, we must first shake off the notion that waiting is passive. Unlike the helpless feeling of a waiting room, this fruit is more like “the active waiting of the farm.”³ Sown seeds take time to wake up and sprout, but in the ‘waiting’ we nurture the soil they rest in. While watching for trees or vines to bear fruit, we prune; we water; and we feed; we’re aware that there’s an order to such things, that fruit takes time (see Mark 4:28). In much the same way, our own growth also proceeds in orderly stages and from divine timing.³

If we take this mindset into our times or seasons of waiting, we can train our brains to embrace ‘waiting’ as a means for spiritual growth. So as we sit in school pick-up lines or await significant news, we pursue practices that teach our minds to wait. We breathe deeply and look for where God is working; we recite Scriptures that keep our minds focused on Jesus; we pray for others. And by implementing these practices of patience, we are transformed, a little at a time, into those who can habitually, patiently wait on the Lord, no matter the circumstance.³ 

This is Spirit-grown character formation. 

“When our every day moments of impatience can be translated by the Holy Spirit into the presenced posture of waiting on the Lord, we will begin to see the small beginnings of fruit on the vine.”

JD Walt³ 

And, friends, we can bear this fruit of patience because we trust the love that we are rooted in (Ephesians 3:17). God’s love is patient, and God is in us; that means we have all we need to live patiently in the dailyness of our lives and as we wait on the Lord. Because of love. Because of Holy Spirit in us.

Bearing Faithfulness

There’s a modern worship song whose lyrics often come to mind:

In the soil, I now surrender.
You are breaking new ground,
So I yield to You and to Your careful hand.
When I trust You, I don’t need to understand.

“New Wine” by Brooke Ligertwood and Hillsong

The imagery of me in the soil, like a seed ready to sprout or like a branch ready to burst forth with fruit, never fails to settle me, never fails to remind me that this fruit-bearing is not all on me.  So in the moment, I yield myself and the circumstance or the future I cannot see to the Father and His careful hand. I choose to trust Him even though I do not understand – because I am the branch on His vine. Because any fruit that is borne out of that relationship is by Him and for Him.

Such a perspective enables us to release all our striving, all our ‘need’ for understanding. Living yielded to the hand of our Gardener, choosing His will over our own, is faithfulness.⁴ 

Literally, ‘faithfulness’ means full of faith. And “faith is the Spirit-given ability to see what can’t be seen with the naked eye. It is the gifted capacity to see beyond what is and into what could be.”⁵ Jesus, full of His humanity, gives us a great picture of faithfulness on the night of His arrest. In His prayers to the Father, He expresses His will to avoid the pain and suffering that lie ahead of Him, pleading for the ‘cup’ to be taken from Him (Luke 22:42). Yet, He ends that prayer with, “not my will, but yours be done,” and He steps into the moment ready to face it all (vv.42-48).

Like patience, faithfulness is active. It’s a fruit borne of faith in God yet goes beyond simply believing in God (James 2:19). It’s believing Him for His own faithfulness to keep His promises, to fulfill His role, to remain in us. When we’re full of faith, we depend on God with a trust so deep that we are able to choose to walk in His ways.⁶ And just as with any Fruit of the Spirit, such faithfulness doesn’t come from us trying to force it to happen. It is borne from the Spirit working in us and us working with Him.

Dan Wilt, a writer and pastor with Seedbed, startled me with his humor one day, stating, “There’s no grunting to be heard in an orchard – for trees don’t force their fruit.”⁷ Once I quit laughing, the reality of what he had said really hit me. I can’t force myself to be faithful. I can desire it. I can ask Holy Spirit to help grow that fruit in me. But I can’t produce that spiritual fruit by willing it into existence, grunting or otherwise.

So, perhaps, we need to clarify that the activity required in the fruit-bearing-process doesn’t depend on our striving. The activity looks more like keeping ourselves rooted in God’s love, like moving through life with our eyes on Jesus rather than on our to-do lists or on the people around us who appear to be producing more fruit than we are. Faith is certainly active while also requiring surrender and dependence on God, but its fruit actually comes from our relationship with the only One who can truly be faithful.⁵ 

The stronger our relationship with Jesus, the more faithful we will be. 

We are at the place in this study of the Fruit of the Spirit where we must remind ourselves that this fruit is a description of God’s own character. ‘Faithful’ is who God is. And nothing apart from Him will make us faithful. So our role in becoming faithful like Jesus is to continually feed and nurture our relationship with Him. We “learn to depend on His way of life above our own fluctuating passions,” becoming more trustworthy and faithful in the process.⁶

Let’s take hold of Eugene Peterson’s way of describing God’s faithfulness and remember that it’s His faithfulness toward us and in us that will grow and sustain our own:

“God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of his Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.”

1 Corinthians 1:9 MSG, my emphasis

Just as Jesus will never give up on us, neither will we give up on Him. With Holy Spirit’s direction and power, we can live full of faith! We can resist fear and pride and sin – and trust in “God’s emerging future more than the circumstances in front of us.”⁷ This is living fruitfully for God with unwavering faithfulness to Him. 

Friends, let us take a deep breath and re-center ourselves; let’s re-root ourselves in the soil of God’s love, in the presence of the One who gave His life for us, and in the truth of Holy Spirit’s power in us. Let’s retrain our brains to slow down, to wait on the Lord, and to trust in Jesus’ patience and faithfulness to lead us as we pursue holy, fruit-filled lives. 

Father God, we recognize within ourselves a tendency for seeking control. We confess that we want to understand why life happens the way it does, what You’re up to, and how the future will work out. And so we repent. We lay down this prideful way of gripping the reins of life too tightly and instead offer ourselves as living sacrifices before You. Like Jesus, we surrender our will for yours – because we trust You. Holy Spirit, we seek to become more like Jesus, and to do so, we know that it requires us to rely on your presence in us to empower and guide us. We ask that You would work in us in such a way that our character formation is shaped by You, that You would help us surrender to the work of training our brains to wait. Bring to mind practices we can employ in every moment where we must learn to wait, and in the process, help us bear the fruit of patience as we put our trust in the Father’s plans and timing. Lord Jesus, keep teaching us what faithfulness looks like, keep showing us that being faithful like You doesn’t require trying harder but a simple ‘remaining’ in You. Help us to remain rooted in your love – because with You, the Faithful One in us, we will bear the fruit of faithfulness. It’s in your holy name we pray, amen.
(inspired by the lyrics of “New Wine;” 1 John 1:9; Romans 12:1-2; Galatians 5:16,22; 1 Corinthians 2:16; Isaiah 40:31; Luke 22:42; Ephesians 3:17)

Resources: I love sharing with you the books, podcasts, articles, and anything else that has inspired, encouraged, or taught me. These are humble offerings with no expectations.

• 1 – Biblehub on the Greek word for ‘to bring forth fruit’ as seen in the Parable of the Sower, ie: Luke 8:15
• 2 – Biblehub on the Greek word for ‘patience’
• 3 – JD Walt on the Fruit of the Spirit of ‘patience’ in the Wake Up Call, 11/23/2022
• 4 – I want to acknowledge that I had planned to be pairing patience with self-control this week. But as I researched it (after sending out my newsletter), I realized that self-control is even better paired with gentleness. So, here we are putting patience together with faithfulness. And what a great pairing it is!
• 5 – JD Walt in the post on faithfulness on the Wake Up Call, 11/29/2022
• 6 – The Bible Project article on the “Fruit of the Spirit”
• 7 – Dan Wilt in his “Fruit Can Burst Forth From Your Life” Wake Up Call post
• Two specific songs on our Spotify playlist, Pursue Holiness, carry out themes from today’s post — the idea that we are formed into Christ’s likeness by His Spirit in us. Charity Gayle’s song, “Because of Jesus,” belts out that very line, “Into your likeness You transform me, making me holy, like You’re holy, no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” We pursue holiness not just for the achievement, the acquiring of holiness but for the embodiment of Christ in us, including His actual character. Then, Eric Nieder’s song, “Faithful,” beautifully incorporates Psalm 139 to demonstrate God’s faithfulness and the fact that even when we fail to be faithful, He always will be. A third song puts it all together — SEU Worship’s “Fruit Takes Time,” which says outright, “I asked the Lord for patience; He threw me into the waiting. …Hold me, shape me, change me daily; Find me faithful, good fruit takes time to grow.” Here’s to holy waiting, Spirit-shaping, and loving trust that submits to God’s will and ways.
• My monthly newsletter, The Abiding Life, goes to email inboxes the first week of each month to those who have subscribed on my website. I also post them on Substack. My most recent edition can be found there, and you can subscribe for future newsletters on Substack, here.
• Many of you have found me on Substack. Thank you so much! And, if you’d like to listen to (rather than read) these weekly posts, you can do so on Substack. It’s easy to see and use the audio bar across the top of each post. While you’re on Substack, check out the ministry I’m blessed to be part of, the Devoted Collective.

Rhythms: As my newsletter’s title infers, we seek to develop an abiding life in this space — a place where we can get informed but also be transformed as we learn to abide in God’s presence throughout our days. I like to think that developing rhythms is one way to aid us in our desire to become more Christlike.

• As we progress in this fall series, we’ll be talking more and more about the rhythms we can engage in as the ‘means of grace’. Such rhythms are not tools to earn grace or holiness; rather, they’re active disciplines we enter into with Holy Spirit; they’re ways or places we can be transformed by God’s holiness. Very simply, the ‘means of grace’ are outward practices we employ in order to be more fully shaped by God’s life; in other words, they are the ‘means’ to being and living holy.
  
  A sixth ‘means of grace’ practice that shapes us in our deep, inner being is fasting. Fasting not as a way to diet or get physically healthy but as a way to draw closer to God, not as a trend but as way to tend to our souls. There is so much we could say about fasting, but that would be a whole post in itself. So, I’ll link two great podcast episodes from That Sounds Fun with Annie F. Downs that helped me differentiate between fads and formation: Episode 1052 and Episode 1053.

• We’re all called to share the truth about who Jesus is. One way you can do that is by sharing this site and telling others your own stories of faith experiences. May we use our whole selves to tell others about our holy God!!

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“All the Bits and Pieces” Photo by Victoria Soldaska on Unsplash.
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