Episode #276 - Patience

Patience, while difficult to learn and apply, is the precursor to all other celestial attributes and is one of the pillars of celestial life.  Celestial patience is the key to all other blessings that the Lord has for us in the eternities.

Transcript

Welcome to Episode #276 – Patience.  I am your host Damon Socha.  As I talk with other individuals and even in my own suffering, the most common question I get is why.  Why does the Lord allow for the illness and then the next question is why it needs to last for so long in our lives.  I have struggled for a few decades wondering about this question.  While the answers might vary per person, I believe that the Lord gives us some answers in the scriptures.  One of my favorite books of scripture is the book of James, believed to be the brother of the Savior and the first bishop of Jerusalem.  This book is condensed and carries with it a great deal of very good doctrine and principles of the gospel.  I see the influence of an older brother in James’s book and his teachings.  We are all familiar with the book of James because of the account of the first vision of Joseph Smith the prophet.  We know that he who lacks wisdom can ask of god.

Interestingly enough though, the verses that precede this beautiful verse are important to those of us who suffer.  Listen carefully to what the Lord says starting in verse two of the first chapter.

2. My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations.  Just a quick note here Jospeh Smith during his translation changed temptations to afflictions.  A significant change and important to us.

3. Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.

4. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire wanting nothing.

I hope that you heard what I did in that scripture.  Patience appears to be a critical piece of perfection.  And the Lord sees afflictions as the best method to teach this principle of the gospel and to include it in our lives.  It does appear that afflictions might be the main process of the Lord’s methods. The answer to why is because of how patience must be learned.  So the next question is why is patience so critical to salvation and exaltation?  What does patience provide in the overall scheme of the plan of happiness?  Because from my limited view the road of patience does not always provide for happiness, at least during the process of learning.  Perhaps after the fact, but does that warrant the Savior causing us to suffer throughout our life with such a difficult illness?

The answer is in the scripture and it seems that true patience takes a lifetime to learn.  But why is patience one of the premiere attributes.  Certainly the time it takes to learn it gives it some preeminence.  But patience as a pillar has never really entered my mind until recently.  Perhaps because I am in the midst of the trial, I cannot fully see the purpose and it certainly could be my limited mortal view of the eternities.

As I have studied the scriptures, I have found patience an interesting subject fully of divine nature.  Now when I say patience.  This isn’t the forced patience of Laman and Lemuel where they murmured their way to the promised land.  Eight years in the wilderness was a long time considering the distance they covered on the Saini Peninsula.  They journeyed about the same distance as many of the pioneers did in 3 months on their way to Salt Lake City.  Eight years was not needed unless there was a divine purpose in it.  And patience seems to be one of those purposes.

When we talk about patience, we are talking about trust in the Lord.  Any other type of patience is really outside of the divine.  Yes we can be patience and murmuring.  And we can be patience and lack faith.  We can have patience and lack trust.  We can be forced into patience in the sense that we can suffer without any real celestial benefits.  True divine patience only comes when we fully trust in the Lord.  Patience is the essence of “enduing it well” as asked by the Lord of Joseph Smith in Liberty Jail.  To endure it well we must learn patience with the Lord.  The great problem is our mortal body is not set up for patience.

Our brain abhors pain and suffering and will do anything to find some type of relief.  This is contrary to what we need as saints.  This isn’t to say that we must suffer to the very nth degree.  We can certainly look for solutions to our suffering.  It is to say that our brain is wired to be impatient and to seek immediate relief.  We must teach it patience through longsuffering and faith that the Lord will relieve us when the time comes.  Patience fortunately or unfortunately is a drop by drop, line upon line type of attribute that is critical to salvation but is a long-term process that must be coupled with faith.

I admit like many others that my faith has failed a time or two.  And I have certainly cried out “Oh God Where art thou?” more than a time or two.  That is really the core issue with patience it must be done with an eye of faith.  We must fully come to trust the Savior and his timing.  That is the core issue.  As we submit our will to the Savior we will find that he can make the changes we need.  So often we begrudgingly submit to the will with a feigned smile and a nod but we do not submit to trust him fully.  I believe this is the mortal brain crying out asking when will the nightmare end.  When will I have happiness and peace in my life.

What is strange about the gospel in many ways is that the greater blessings often come through trials and tribulations.  It seems this is the only way to submit the brain and body to the will of the Lord.  There is really no other way to learn patience than to submit to a lengthy trial in our lives.  I don’t think we could learn it any other way.  If we have nothing to be patient for then our brain will not learn it on its own because it isn’t wired that way.  We also need to have trials that stretch us to our very core because it is the core emotional and spiritual that we are attempting to change.  If the Lord gave us a simple trial we would learn simple patience.  Heavenly difficult and long duration trials are what is needed for patience to occur.

Think of the times in your life when you have learned some patience.  You have waited for the Lord and he has delivered you.  This causes the learning to penetrate deep into our souls and to a place where it will never be forgotten unless we turn from the Lord.  It seems that we can also unlearn patience if we turn from the Lord’s designs and purposes.  So patience is not only an uphill battle.  It is an uphill battle in the sand and water with the water pressing against us so mightily that if we stop for a moment we tend to fall backwards and lose ground.  Somewhat like a flowing river and we are paddling upstream where our mortality is consistently telling us just to give up and the Lord is telling us to keep paddling.  Eventually the paddling becomes easier but then the river narrows and the waters speed up.

Patience is then more than a one-time event it is an ongoing process until we are perfected in our lives.  Difficult yes.  Troubling yes.  But doable, because the Lord is in the canoe with us and at times paddles when we cannot.  We are after all wearing his yoke as we fully take the gospel upon us.  And so with the Lord patience is much easier than without him.  Without him we would most likely never gain much ground in our pursuit of patience.

Now and again the river slows and we are not required to paddle as excessively as we do in the rapids and sometimes we are required to exit the boat and carry our canoe around the waterfalls and dangerous rapids and this most certainly causes us to ask why because the river is so much easier than carrying that heavy canoe.  Yet if the Lord is with us he carries one side as we carry the other along with all our other baggage we have decided to take with us.  As that baggage gets heavier we like the pioneers decide what our priorities really should be and what we need to shed and what we need to keep thus patience is a catalyst to help us with our other attributes.  Patience seems to be the glue to perfection and keeps all the attributes where they need to be.

Now I am not saying patience is easy even with the Lord.  Certainly easier than without him.  We will at times carry heavy burdens during our sojourn around the dangers of the waters.  That is just part of the process.  Sometimes we have to lift heavier weights to gain strength.  Once we have mastered the weight of the canoe it seems that we are granted the gift of a heavier more sturdy canoe but this again increases the trial and we are likely to ask why when our other canoe was perfectly capable of carrying our baggage.  But the Lord knows that stronger waters and deeper, swifter rapids are ahead and the weight is needed if we want to progress.

Yes we are going to murmur and complain.  I think that is part of the learning process but we should remember not to murmur if possible.  Remember murmuring is really the act of complaining until the Lord finally gives into our request, even if it is to our detriment.  Remember Martim Harris and the manuscript that was lost.  When we ask long enough the Lord will grant our petitions but it may not be to our benefit and we will find ourselves drifting in dangerous waters without a paddle.  We can actually be drowned in our own self-pity and desire to be released from the Lord’s training program.  We tend to want to get out of the water and wander in the wilderness.

It is also important to understand what the Lord means when he says through James “that ye may be perfect and entire wanting nothing..”  It seem perfection is obtained when we have sufficient patience to not even ask the Lord when our trial might end.  When we no longer have selfish desires for things we really do not need in our lives.  To want nothing appears to be the pinnacle of patience perfection and when we have mastered patience we have mastered many of not all of the other qualities needed for perfection.  So patience is not only the glue but the varnish that makes everything complete in our lives.

But how do we do this with a mortal brain and a body that cannot stand afflictions.  We submit to the Lord’s will and help to learn and obtain patience.  Incidentally, this will mean that our trials are likely to become more difficult and troubling as we learn to be patient.  We would think that as we learn our trials might become easier and in a sense they do in that we come to trust the Lord with greater and greater devotion.  But the trials themselves will likely culminate in our own Gethsemane.  A final all encompassing trial that tests us to our very limits and allows for deep and eternal learning.  Our fight in all of this is really not against the trial but against our own will and desire for relief.  We must be patience and as the scripture says allow it to have its perfect work in our lives.

Ultimately learned celestial patience will cause all other attributes to develop in our lives.  If we desire greater charity listen to what is required from Moroni chapter 7:45 And charity suffereth long, and is kind, and envieth not, and is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil and rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in truth, bearath all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.  Every attribute of charity requires patience.  It is not a coincidence that the first attribute of charity is long suffering or patience suffering.  And so as we learn patience we will learn charity and faith and hope as the scriptures teach.

Patience is the key to every blessing the Lord has for us in this life and the next.  Learning patience will in the end allow us to enter into God’s kingdom crowned with glory and eternal life.  And learning patience can only come from a relationship with the Lord through our trials and bondage.  We must walk the same path as the Lord and all the trials and troubles he faced.  This is how he learned to be celestial in a mortal body and so the path is the same for us.  And he will help us walk that path with patience if we allow him to.  There will be moments of deep difficulties where we cannot see the divine purpose of paddling up river and portaging our canoe around the dangerous waters but the Lord has already paddled the river and knows the dangers perfectly.  So as we submit our will to his we will avoid even more difficult waters in our lives and suffer only what is needed rather than suffer without any blessing.  The Lord is indeed the pathway to learning patience and so as we come to him he will teach us of his ways.  Until next time.  Do your part so that the Lord can do his.