J.D. Greear on Sunday Service
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Let us pray. Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing psalms. James 5.13 Dear God, thank you for being the only real source of comfort and help when I am in need. Allow me to surrender to you fully. There are times when I try to control specific outcomes by researching what the right answer might be. I will ask for advice or seek approval from family and friends during times of doubt.

Please remind me that the correct answer comes through prayer and not from making a list of pros and cons. Let my mind be calm and allow my thoughts to rest in your word when I seek to control things myself. I know that anything is possible through daily prayer and my abounding trust in you. Amen. Thank you for listening to today's daily prayer.

For more inspiration and an incredible message from our feature pastor, stay tuned to Pray.com's Sunday service.

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Patience, James says, is absolutely necessary if you're going to experience anything of God's goodness in your life. He does not work quickly. He aims to produce pearls in you, but pearls take time, and time takes patience. Welcome to Summit Life with Pastor J.D. Greer. Thank you for joining us for Sunday service on Pray.com. Now grab your Bible, and let's join Pastor J.D. as he opens God's Word. ♪

James chapter five, if you have your Bibles, James chapter five. I remember being fascinated as a fourth grader when I learned from my teacher, Mrs. Kibbler, about how a pearl is formed.

Basically, an irritating little grain of sand gets lodged inside of an oyster shell, and no matter what it tries, the poor little oyster can't get rid of it. It laments, and it struggles. It prays in whatever ways oysters pray. I imagine, you know, Lord, if it be thy will, remove this thine piece of sand from the gullet of thy servant. But the heavens are silent.

The oyster is frustrated, exasperated even, and it's at this moment that that little oyster, to quote a 90s urban poet, feels like it's about to lose its mind. Up in here, up in here. And so the oyster does.

The only remaining thing it knows to do to find relief. It coats the grain of sand with a milky substance called aragonite, a substance that the oyster normally uses to make its shell. And it covers and covers and covers this tiny irritant until that irritant has been transformed into something of great value, which we pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for.

At the end of the day, that incredibly valuable pearl hanging around your neck is the result of an irritated oyster bewildered by the fact that God did not answer its aquatic prayers. Here is the principle. No irritation, no frustration, no sense of y'all gonna make me lose my cool and act a fool up in here, up in here. None of that.

In chapter five, James explains that God aims to produce pearls in our lives. And just like with the oyster, for them to develop in us, it's gonna take time. And so he says, verse seven, be patient, therefore, brothers. Now you see the word therefore. Therefore connects everything James has said before with what he is about to say next. So let's just take a moment and think about that. What has James talked about up to this point? He's talked about patience.

suffering. He's talked about disappointments. He's talked about frustrations that we have with each other. He's talked about our unanswered prayers and our unfulfilled dreams. And James is saying that in all of these things, God is doing something good. Even though you've asked God to take away all those things, he's doing something good. But to experience the good, we have to exercise our

Patience. Be patient. Therefore, brothers, patience. Patience. Patience. I hate patience. The Greek word for patience is macrothumia. Everybody want to say that together? Say macrothumia. Say it. Macrothumia. It just sounds nasty, doesn't it? Let's just all get on the same page for a minute, shall we? You were looking at a guy who is not good at patience.

I'm glad my wife is not in here right now or she would be screaming amen so loudly it would be distracting and embarrassing. Of all my many, many faults, this one is probably the worst. And I have a feeling I'm not alone. At the grocery store, at the grocery store, are you the kind of person who sizes up all the lines to figure out which one's gonna be the quickest?

As I'm walking up to the line, I'm calculating who is likely to pay slowly, who is most likely to want to chat with the grocery store clerk, or maybe the worst, who is going to actually pull out coupons. I'm like, it is 2023, and you're going to rummage through your pocketbook to find a mailer so you can save 20 cents on a head of lettuce. Come on. And if you're really sick...

You keep track of who entered the line at the same time you did to see how well you fare against them. And if somebody finishes a couple spots ahead of me, my whole day is ruined. Patience. My lack of patience causes problems in our marriage. Sometimes if Veronica is telling me about something and I feel like she's taking too long to explain it or to get to the point, I'll go and I'll kind of go like this. I'm telling you, those conversations never end well. And y'all, I know that's wrong and I know it's gonna end badly, but I just can't help myself. I'm impatient.

And I feel like it's not even entirely my fault. We live in a culture that seems to have conspired against us to inculcate impatience in us.

I mean, one-click shopping, I love that. I got Amazon same-day delivery and Walmart Plus can have it for me in two or three hours and it is worth the price of both memberships just to watch them battle it out over who can get it to me faster. And would somebody please get the Amazon drone system we've all heard so much about, can somebody get that up and working? If we can put a man on the moon, there is no reason why my replacement computer ink cartridge should not be at my door within 15 minutes.

Y'all, and if there were ever a business opportunity waiting to happen, it is wedding the drone system to the Krispy Kreme hot now sign. I mean, when that hot now sign comes on, I want a notification on my phone that gives me the option to have a dozen on my desk within five minutes. There is no telling what I would pay for that. Streaming platforms now offer no waiting gratification in our entertainment.

Are you like me and my wife who genuinely wonder how in the world we used to wait a week between episodes of our favorite shows? I mean, now if I can't binge the whole series straight through, I don't even wanna start watching. We are an instant gratification culture and while it's convenient and I love it,

It also has its share of negative effects on us. Dr. Paul Brand, who was a renowned orthopedic surgeon who spent half of his career working in Asia and the other half in America, he said, and I quote, people in technologically advanced societies live at a greater comfort level, to be sure, but they seem far less equipped to handle suffering and are far more traumatized by suffering when it inevitably comes.

Why is that? Why do you think? Why are people today so less equipped to endure pain and suffering? The magazine Psychology Today ran an article not too long ago explaining that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of students asking for treatment for anxiety, depression, and addictions on campus. We all know that. We've heard that.

but it was their explanation for why this was happening that I found most fascinating. They said, and I quote, for young American adults, there is no psychic middle ground anymore. Frustration catapults immediately into crisis. There's no psychic middle ground between desire and the fulfillment of that desire.

We don't know what to do with that space, that psychic middle ground. That's called patience. And we just don't have it. But patience, James says, is absolutely necessary if you're going to experience anything of God's goodness in your life. He does not work quickly. He aims to produce pearls in you, but pearls take time and time takes patience. So first, let's just read this passage and then we're going to ask two questions.

Number one, what exactly is patience? And then secondly, we're gonna ask, how can we develop patience? Verse seven, if you got your Bibles, "'Be patient, therefore, brothers, "'until the coming of the Lord. "'See how the farmer waits "'for the precious fruit of the earth, "'being patient about it until it receives "'the early and the late rains. "'You also be patient, establish your hearts, "'for the coming of the Lord is at hand.'"

Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged. Behold, the judge is standing at the door. As an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast.

You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord in his life, how the Lord is indeed compassionate and merciful. Okay, so first, what is patience? Patience, as I said, is the Greek word makrothumia, and it literally means long-suffering. Makro, long, thumia, suffering. Long-suffering. We're not talking about brief flickers of pain in an otherwise charmed life.

We're talking about long seasons of suffering. Make sure you get that because sometimes we think that as Christians, we are entitled to basically charmed lives, hashtag blessed, with occasional moments of suffering, a bad afternoon, a sore thumb, a prodigal that wanders for a few months, but then comes back home. We get passed over for promotion at work, but very quickly vindicated and

and then rewarded with more. But you see the word patience in and of itself implies suffering that lasts a long time, a long time. Say it again, say macro. Macro, do your hands like this when you say it. Macro, long, thumia. I do this right here for suffering, okay? Long, suffering. There's your object lesson for today. All lightness aside, I know some of you are there now, and I know it's hard. You're in pain. You're single, and you don't wanna be single.

You can't find a job. You've been treated unfairly. You were lied about. You were taken advantage of. Macrothumia. James uses another word in this passage as a synonym for patience. Steadfast. Verse 11. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. Steadfast is the Greek word hupomoneo or hyperstand. Hupomoneo. Think of it as standing that won't quit.

Tom Hanks stars in a great movie called Bridge of Spies that illustrates this word very well. The movie recounts the true story of a Russian immigrant named Rudolf Abel who immigrates to America and gets accused of spying for Russia. Tom Hanks plays the American lawyer who defends him. At one point, Rudolf Abel says to the Tom Hanks character, you remind me of somebody in my village that we always called Stoike Muzik.

And I know our Russian member is going to light me up later for how I pronounce that, but that's the best I can do.

Tom Hanks looks confused when Abel says that. So Abel elaborates. He says, this one time, this one time, our house was overrun by partisan border guards, dozens of them. My father was beaten. My mother was beaten. And this man, my father's friend, he was beaten too. And I watched this man. Every time the guards hit him, he stood back up again. So they hit him harder. Still, he got back to his feet. I think because of this, they just stopped the beating.

They let him live. Stoiche muzik. I remember them saying stoiche muzik, which means standing man. Standing man. Standing that just won't quit. That's what James means by steadfast. You keep getting up, you won't quit. In the words of another 90s poet, Chumbawamba, I get knocked down and I get up again. Ain't nothing gonna keep me down. That brings us to the next question. How do we develop patience?

James is gonna answer this through a couple of illustrations. Illustration number one is the farmer and the seed. Verse seven, see how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and the late rains? So you also, you should be patient like that. What does a farmer do after he plants the seed? Answer, very little. All he can do is wait. He's gotta wait on the rains, which are totally out of his control. Sure, sure, he can put down some fertilizer. He can keep the crows away, but he can't wait

But what happens after the farmer plants the seeds is mostly between the seed, the soil, and the weather. If the farmer is frustrated at the speed of the seed's growth, the worst possible thing he can do is dig up the seed and try to make it grow. That'll do nothing but kill it. I remember during one particularly challenging season with one of our kids, I felt pretty exasperated. I thought I'd taught everything I was supposed to teach.

but it just didn't seem to really be taking in their lives. And so I was frustrated, wondering what I needed to do differently. What had I done wrong? What had I not taught? What had I not said? Where had I not taken them? What experience had I not given them? Where had I failed? I was talking with a pastor mentor friend that he said, he said, you know, JD, your problem is that you're thinking like a mechanic. And at this point in their lives, you really should be thinking like a farmer. I said, I don't understand that. He said, well, if a mechanic hears a rattle in the engine, what does he do?

He pulls the car over immediately, figures out what's making the rattle, pulls out a wrench and tightens it. If the farmer, however, is frustrated at the growth of a seed, the worst thing the farmer can do is dig up the seed to check on it and try to readjust his planting of it. That is sure to kill it. All he can do is wait, leave it alone. What happens from this point on is between the seed and the soil. My friend then told me, he said, J.D., you and Veronica plant a good seed.

You need to put your wrenches away right now and stop trying to fix everything. You just gotta wait. You gotta cover that scene with your prayers. You gotta stop trying to fix it and let God do his work. Or to change the metaphor, another mentor told me that the teenage years for my kids are like that scene in Apollo 13, which is another great Tom Hanks movie, by the way. Tom is no Nicolas Cage, but he easily qualifies as second greatest actor of our generation. The movie, the movie recounts one of the early attempts to put a man on the moon.

The attempt fails and the spacecraft is badly damaged. So they're just trying to get it back home safely. Because of how badly the space shuttle is damaged, Ed Harris is worried that it's gonna burn up when it re-enters the atmosphere. And when it enters the atmosphere, they lose radio contact with it for like, it's like four minutes. And all they can do and all we the audience can do is stare at the place where it is supposed to re-emerge from the atmosphere.

Even if you know the history, you know it's coming out, but it's still like the longest, the longest, tensest four minutes of any movie anywhere. My mentor friend said, those four minutes are the teenage years for a parent. It's radio silence. All you can do is stare at the place where they're supposed to emerge. You're like, well, they went in at the right angle. I hope the shields work. Here's hoping. Now, some of you are wondering, what does being an astronaut have to do with being a farmer? Here's what they have in common. It's that middle space. It's that middle space.

That vacuum of helplessness, that period, that ellipsis of waiting where you've done what you can do. And now all you can do is trust God to send the early and the late rains. Don't try to dig it up. Don't try to fix it. Stop trying to play God. Here's his second illustration. The prophets and Job. Verse 10, as an example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Many of the prophets, you know, preached for years.

meeting with nothing but persecution and opposition. They weren't given big auditoriums. They weren't given book deals and big honorariums. They were given persecution and opposition before any of their prophecies came true. For example, think of Noah. Noah, who seemed like a genuine crazy man, talking about a worldwide flood for 120 years before the first rained up, Raphael.

Or Joseph, whom God had destined to save Israel and rule Egypt, but was first betrayed by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused, and then imprisoned for two decades. Or how about Isaiah, who wrote those beautiful words in Isaiah 53 about a suffering but victorious Savior who would be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities and by whose stripes we would be healed, but...

but whose own life ended not with a big book signing tour or a platinum worship album featuring all those great lyrics. No, no, Isaiah's life ended, Jewish history tells us, with the rebellious, unbelieving king putting him into a hollowed-out log and cutting it in two. That's how his life ended. There was Jeremiah who, for extended periods of time, was kept in a dungeon, submerged up to his armpits in mud,

who suffered so long that he wrote a whole book about it called Lamentations, in which he said, God has driven me into a place of darkness without any light. Surely against me, he turns his hand again and again the whole day long. Or how about Ezekiel, who was told by God to lie on his left side in public for 390 days, each day symbolizing a year of God's discipline on the children of Israel. 390 days. What did the creative team do with that sermon series?

You come in here every week and I'm just lying on my side like, yep, same thing this week. Or how about David, who after he'd been anointed king for seven years, lived in caves under threat of death, alienated from his family, lied about and slandered, who could only say Psalm 13, how long, oh Lord. Or Daniel held in captivity for his entire adult life, or Paul beaten and bleeding chained to the prison walls, ultimately beheaded by Nero. You tracking with me here?

All of these prophets endured long macro stretches of darkness, but for all of them in the end, their words came true. And today we consider them, verse 11, blessed. James says, question, if you'd been living at the same time as they were, would you have considered them, hashtag blessed? Would you have looked at Jeremiah and the dungeon or Daniel in exile or Paul and James and said, now there, there's a blessed man. It's only now that we consider them blessed.

blessed, they had to wait for it. Macro, Thumia. Then James points to one more person whose case is so special that he has to mention him directly by name. You've probably also heard, he says, of the steadfastness of Job. You've seen in his life the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful. Poor Job. Poor Job.

Job was a man who had legitimately no idea about what God was doing in his life. There were things happening in the heavenly realm he had no knowledge of whatsoever. And God allowed Satan to inflict on Job all kinds of pain, body pain, family pain, the death of his kids, marriage pain, friend pain. But Job never gave up. Standing man.

He kept getting up and in time, Job came to see two things. First, that God's presence never had left him. Job is the one who said in the midst of his pain, I know my redeemer lives and I know one day I will stand with him alive on the earth. Y'all at the time, Job did not even know half of what it would mean for God to be his redeemer. How much it would actually cost God for God to stand there with him on the earth. Job just sensed God had never left him and would redeem him from trouble.

Second, Job came to see that even when it felt like God had abandoned his good work in Job's life, he actually hadn't. In fact, we learn at the end of Job's life, Job 42, I think it's verse six or something, the Lord restored the fortunes of Job after he had prayed for his friends and the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. God gave Job back double, which doesn't mean I've told you that that's what always is going to happen in your earthly life.

That when you lose your job, that you're guaranteed a new one just around the corner where you work half the hours and get twice the pay. That's not the point. Job's restoration in chapter 42 is a picture of eternity. How all things will be restored to us in eternity. But what Job's life does show you, James says, verse 11, is the purpose of the Lord's

You can see from Job that the purpose of the Lord is actually compassionate and merciful. In Job's life, you and I get to have a glimpse of what God will ultimately do with all of us, both in this life and in eternity. We see that though the arc of God's goodness is long, it never stops bending toward goodness and will one day fully resolve into infinite goodness. And that was true even when Job couldn't feel it. Y'all, Job was the first one to sing. Even when I can't see it, you're working.

Even when I can't feel it, you're working. You never stop. You never stop working. In verse nine, James identifies the opposite of patience. The sign that you're not exercising it. Verse nine, do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged. Behold, the judge is standing at the door, grumbling against,

Grumbling the word takes us back to Israel wandering in the wilderness because that's what characterized their 40-year experience, grumbling. They didn't trust God, so they grumbled against God and they started grumbling against each other, which is what always happens. You take out your frustrations with God and how he is letting your life go, you start taking that out on somebody else. You remember how in our study of chapter four, how we saw that our anger at one another is usually fueled by the fact that we're not getting what we want?

which ultimately goes back to a problem between us and God. Now, again, like I said then, that's not to say the other person's not genuinely at fault.

Just that ultimately your rage comes from something that has nothing to do with that person. You're not getting what you want. They're keeping you from it. And the fact that it upsets you so much points to the presence of an idol in your life, which has nothing to do with them. That is against God. James says, don't grumble out your frustration with life and with God. Don't take that out on each other.

Even if that person really is at fault, don't dwell on it. Don't cede to get revenge or be vindicated. God will handle that and God will be back real soon. You see that phrase that says the judge is standing at the door? If I know the judge is literally right there by the door, he's about to walk in, I don't need you to vindicate me. I don't need social media to vindicate me. I don't need to get even with you. That judge is standing at the door. He's about to walk in and take care of it. I can be like, just

You shut up because dad will be back real soon. So those are James's examples of how to develop patience, the farmer and the prophets and Job. Now, using those two examples, can we just make this really, really practical? When you're in that season of long suffering, and some of you, again, are there this morning, how can you develop patience so that God can do his work in you? James tells you to look three places. This is as practical as I can make it. He says, first, I need you to look backwards.

Remember the purpose of the Lord that you saw in the prophets and in Job, how the Lord really is compassionate and merciful. Through the prophets and Job, you have seen

What the Lord's purpose is and summit, can I say that we've seen it now somewhere even more convincing than in the prophets and Job in the cross and resurrection. We see the purpose of the Lord, how he is indeed compassionate and merciful, more compassionate and merciful than any of them ever even imagined. Though we endure a crucifixion on Friday, we now know there's always a resurrection coming on Sunday. Though weeping lasts for a night, joy comes in the morning.

And in the cross and resurrection, pay attention here, watch this. In the cross and resurrection, we see, follow me, that there's a time gap between the suffering and the resurrection. By the way, you ever wonder after Jesus died why he wasn't resurrected immediately? He's crucified on a Friday afternoon, but he wasn't resurrected until Sunday morning.

Honestly, I can get God waiting at least until the morning, you know, give it a full night to prove that he's dead. Plus morning resurrection is more symbolic with the sun coming up and everything. It's better for the little postcards we would make one day about it. So, you know, I get waiting until the next morning, but why wait another whole day?

I mean, how hard must that have been for those disciples? The Messiah that they trusted themselves to and left everything to follow. The Messiah was dead. They were confused. Their whole world had come crashing down. They didn't know where to go. They were lost. They just hid for like all that time. Why wait a whole full two days before resurrecting? Well, y'all, that delay was in part because so much of our lives feel like we live on that second day. It's that middle space of pain.

That middle space of delayed gratification where we're like, God, where are you? Where's your goodness? When's this answer gonna come? It's like you're completely gone. Listen, y'all, our Bibles, you ever notice this? They're filled with three-day stories. Abraham's gotta walk up a mountain for two days thinking he's gonna sacrifice Isaac until Genesis says, on the third day, God stopped him and provided a ram as a substitute.

Why not stop him as soon as Abraham said yes? He had to wait three days for it. Esther fasted and prayed to stop a genocide directed against her people. And the king, it says, changed his mind on the third day. The question is why a day in between the desperation and the salvation? Why isn't every three-day story a two-day story instead? It's because God is producing pearls of faith and steadfastness in our lives. And pearls take time and pearls take patience.

And so James says, in a time of waiting, look backwards and see how God has worked in the past. And then he says, look, number two, forward. Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand. That word establish means become fixed like concrete. Throughout this book, James has talked about unstable people like the wind, like grass, like a wave of the sea. This word establish, concrete, implies the opposite of that.

The way we become established, James says, is by how? How do we become established? Look at your Bibles. What's he say? Not me, your Bibles, okay? I wanna see the tops of your heads right now, not your eyes. What does it say? How do you become established? We establish our hearts by reflecting on the coming of the Lord. The fact that it is at hand, which means it's relatively soon. Remember our illustration from last week that we talked about the rope, where this little red section right here represents your life.

And this section right here represents eternity. This little time period that we call life seems so long sometimes, but it's a teeny tiny fraction of eternity. And any suffering you experience now in that red part is more than made up for in the expanse of eternity. And that's relatively close, he says. Now, I do wanna be clear here. We can and should expect the end breaking of God's goodness into our lives now. To quote King David, in the land of the living.

David was like, look, I don't wanna just praise you in heaven. I'm gonna praise you in heaven. It's gonna be awesome in eternity, but I wanna celebrate your goodness and your answers to prayer now in the land of the living. Job experienced that. Many of the prophets experienced that too. We should pray for the in-breaking of God's goodness and we should expect it. But the point remains for some things to get to that final resolution, we gotta wait until eternity for the pearl. God promises he's working all things in our lives for good, but sometimes we can't see it.

And we got to wait until eternity to see full resolution. James says, hang on, it won't be long. The Lord is at hand. I can't help when I say that, but think of some of the old rich Negro spirituals that arose out of the suffering of black Christians in slavery, blatant, outright injustice that looked to them like it would have never ended. And in many cases, it didn't have an end in their lifetime.

They died in those earthly chains of oppression, but they defiantly sang like James instructs them to hear. Jordan River is deep and wide, hallelujah. Milk and honey on the other side, hallelujah. Swing low, sweet chariot, coming forth to carry me home. These slaves felt as if they had nothing on this earth, so they waited eagerly for him. Maybe you feel like there's no resolution ahead for you. And you know, I'll be honest, I wish I could, but I can't stand up here and tell you that

relief is right around let me just you know just give it to tomorrow it's gonna be fine I can't promise you that you're not gonna die in pain I can't promise you that your life will end without suffering I can't promise you that that you'll escape all the shame but I can't promise you that you can die singing Jordan River is deep and wide hallelujah milk and honey on the other side hallelujah what I can promise you is that God has heard every prayer and will answer every single one and will work everything in your life for good making pearls out of all of it just like he promised

Eugene Peterson wrote a great little book on the Psalms in which he pointed out that while a lot of the Psalms contain these heartfelt cries of, where are you, God? Some of the Psalms, he points out, even end without clear resolution to that question. I mean, there are Psalms that are just like, God, I don't understand you. Where are you? You've forsaken me. I'm the worst person on earth. I don't understand.

He said, while that's true about a lot of the Psalms, the last six Psalms, Psalms 145 through 150 are nothing but praise. Go back and read them sometime. There's no request in there. There's no cries of where are you God? There are no lamentations. There are no complaints. It's all just praise. Eugene Peterson's conclusion, the way the Psalms are arranged is meant to show you that any prayer followed far enough will eventually turn into pearls of praise.

Soon enough, you and I are gonna sing the praise of these psalms like Psalm 145, which I paid my kids to memorize a couple summers ago. The Lord is faithful in all his words and kind in all his works. The Lord fulfills the desires of those who fear him. He hears their cry and he saves them. All your works, including me, all your works, O Lord, will praise you. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and your dominion endures throughout all generations.

One day, I'm gonna say that from my heart because all those prayers that I prayed, all of that suffering, I'm gonna see how all of it worked for good and all of it's gonna end in praise because it all happened exactly like God promised it would happen. So see, we look backwards, we look forwards. There's one more direction we look, upwards. That's to God in prayer, but that's what we'll get to, Lord willing, next week because it's the next eight verses. So for now, let me close with this. Tim Keller says there are at least three places.

where God produces pearls in our life through patience. The first one, let's just call them pearls of skill. Those are my words, not his, but I think you can summarize it that way. Pearls of skill. Nothing really worth anything in your life. You know this, parents, elbow your teenager if they're in here when I say this. Nothing in your life that's really valuable is worth, can happen in one click. No skill you develop that makes you able to make a living is one click. It's like Malcolm Gladwell says, to get good at anything, it takes at least 10,000 hours of patient repetitive practice.

For most good things in your life, you need middle space. You need a day two of waiting before a day three of realization. Pearls of grace, let's call that number two. Genuine friendships and solid marriages. Listen, some of you feel like, I know this, you don't. They take time and grace. And some of you don't have space and patience for the kind of relational give and take that it actually takes to form a good friendship. Let me go back to that Psychology Today article that I quoted at the beginning.

That article said that one of the reasons people are having so much trouble maintaining relationships today is that we don't have relational middle space. If somebody treats us unjustly, somebody sins against us or disappoints us or even annoys us, culture says, cut them. You don't need that baggage in your life. Cancel them. If they're not helping you get to the destination you want to get to, cut them. Find better friends. Join a new small group. Find a new church.

Y'all listen, real friendships, pearls of friendships only grow in the soil of grace. Yes, yes, the Bible tells us to confront people when they're in error. And there is certainly a time to end a relationship, particularly if it's abusive. But the Bible points to an enormous middle space of grace in our relationships. And it says things like, it's a man's glory to overlook an offense.

tells us to bear with one another, tells us to turn the other cheek, or love covers a multitude of sins. I'm just gonna tell you right now, if you call out people every time they slight you, if you cut them off every time they disappoint you, you're never gonna have any community and you're gonna end up lonely. You'll feel righteously indignant about how righteous you are on that little island of self-righteousness you call loneliness. Real friendships, pearls of friendships can only grow in the soil of grace. Finally, pearls of faith.

The confidence that God is up to something good even when things feel bad. The confidence, Peter says, is more valuable even than gold. Tim Keller says it like this. He says, every hour something will come along in your life that you bristle at. Every hour. When that happens, you're at a fork in the road. You can either say, I trust God.

I'm gonna be patient with what God is doing right now. That person may be annoying me, but I'm gonna trust God that he's got a good purpose for me in it. And then you can sleep easily. Or you can say, I trust my understanding of what needs to happen and develop an ulcer. It's up to you. Good night's sleep, ulcers, up to you. Pearls of faith or pulmonary embolisms? Your choice. Tim Keller's definition of faith is,

or patience, excuse me. Patience is graciousness, steadiness, and faithfulness in the face of delayed gratification. Church, I told you at the beginning that patience is hard for me. And so I can tell you from experience that I know how difficult it is to wait. And maybe that's you right now. And some of you are even gonna be tempted to walk away from God in a time of waiting. But could you just hang on and just think with me on why that's a terrible decision?

I agree with Philip Yancey in his book, "Disappointment with God." He says, "The only thing worse than disappointment with God is disappointment without God." You see, with Jesus, even though sometimes I don't understand him, I have the confidence that though my weeping lasts for a night, I know joy is coming in the morning. You see, I know that because the Redeemer who died for me on a Friday and seemed absent on a Saturday resurrected with power on a Sunday.

And that's a picture of what he's going to be doing in my life. I know my Redeemer lives and soon I'm going to stand with him victorious on the earth. I've quoted Tim Keller a lot in this message. Recently, you may know Dr. Keller went home to be with Jesus. I had the privilege of attending his funeral in New York City. It was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral. Tim had struggled for the last several years with very painful, aggressive version of pancreatic cancer. And there were

literally thousands of us across the country praying that God would heal him. It was another 10, 15 years with Tim Keller. He's so valuable to us. And the funeral was moving, of course, but it was a normal funeral, except right at the very end, we all stood together and we sang together this old Keith Green song. There is a Redeemer, Jesus, God's own Son, precious Lamb of God, Messiah, Holy One. Thank you, O my Father.

See, supposedly for the first decade or so of Tim Keller's church in Manhattan, the church he planted, it was called Redeemer Presbyterian. They sang that at the end of every single service. And so it perfectly captured Tim's life and his message as well as how he struggled, how he died and what he now sees.

And so as I was thinking of that this week, it felt like particularly apropos that it captured the hope we have in this message. I just thought it might be appropriate for us to end our service that way. There is a redeemer. Y'all, that means I can wait. There is a redeemer. It means that all is worth it. It means eternity is worth it. It's actually not that far away. Faithfulness is worth it. I can wait. Jesus is worthy of my patience. There is a redeemer, which means...

I can be Stoyke Music because he was Stoyke Music, a standing man. And he stands by my side because he stood in my place. As we look ahead to a new year, many of us spend time setting goals, a way of deciding how we'll ultimately spend our time. After all, we can't add any more seconds to the day, so it's important to use the time we have intentionally.

Often we prioritize our health, education, or finances, but the most important thing we can invest our time in is what lasts forever. Our newest resource, the Summit Life 2024 Day Planner, is designed to keep you organized and on track with more than just basic time management. The new year is a great time to take stock of your life and decide how you want to grow in your relationship with God in the coming months.

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Very few goals in life actually happen without a plan to implement them. We pray this planner will be a great tool to help you manage not only your personal life goals, but also your kingdom goals.

Request a copy of the Summit Life 2024 Day Planner when you give to support the ministry of Summit Life. Call 866-335-5220. That's 866-335-5220. Or go to jdgreer.com and request this resource today.

Thanks for joining us today on Summit Life. As always, you can visit us at jdgreer.com. We'll see you next time for Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries. The podcast, The Bible in a Year with Jack Graham, is a moving and inspiring biblical audio experience that will help you master wisdom from the world's greatest book. In each episode, you'll learn to apply biblical principles to everyday life.

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