JAMES DAY 40 - Until the Lord's Coming

DAY 40
Until the Lord’s Coming
James 5:7a
 
Fix your focus to grow your patience.

Above all, James urges us to fix our focus on Jesus Christ. When we do that, we’ll be stretched to trust God’s goodness. We’ll see that God wants what’s good for us even more than we do. We’ll be stretched to trust God’s wisdom, learning that his timing is best. We’ll be stretched to trust God’s power, seeing that God can turn any hurt into greater glory. We’ll be stretched to do what good he empowers us to do and trust him to work out all the rest.

When we fix our focus to grow our patience, we’ll also see that patience is a form of hope. For the Christian, patience only makes sense if our hope in Jesus is true. The gospel promises to tear down the barrier between us and God if we trust Jesus Christ. We sample that promise through the forgiveness of sins, the fellowship of the Church, and the slow healing of our world.

And we wait. We wait for Jesus to come back and finish what he started. We wait for him to judge, to heal, to right wrongs, to comfort the suffering.

Fix your focus to grow your patience. That’s why, more than anything else, we fix our focus on Jesus Christ. And all the saints who’ve walked the Way of Jesus before us but now know him in glory would tell us, “It’s worth the wait.”

REFLECT
James puts a lot of attention in this passage on the return of Jesus. According to James, how does Jesus’s return encourage patience?

PRAY
Lord Jesus, one day you will finish what you started. You will return “to judge the living and the dead,” to show “compassion and mercy.” Grow patience in me until the day we see you face to face. Amen.