Tuesday, March 17th | Daily Devotion
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
“For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” –James 1:3-4
TRANSCRIPTION:
Good morning. Grace and peace be unto all of you, my Father’s children. I pray your Tuesday is already off to an incredible start.
We continue this week in the theme of patience — and today I want us to sit with the words of James, in the first chapter of his letter. What James offers here is not easy to receive, but it is necessary. Because what he is really describing — what patience actually is at its core — is the ability to maintain peace while not in control.
And if we are honest, that is a hard word for most of us.
We are all, in our own way, control freaks. We want to know when. We want to know how. We need the details, the timeline, the outcome mapped out before we can settle. But here is the tension: you are finite, and God is infinite. He moves in ways He does not always disclose. He works according to a plan He does not always preview. And our struggle with patience is really a struggle with that reality — the sense that we are somehow entitled to knowing everything simply because we are invested in the outcome.
That need for control, when it goes unmet, produces anxiety. It produces worry. As though God has not been operating outside of our control since the very beginning.
Think about it this way. You do not wake up each morning worried about whether your lungs will work, whether your heart will keep beating, whether your body will carry you through the day. You have absolutely no control over those things — and yet you do not fret over them, because they have become expected. They are so consistently covered by the grace of God that you have stopped noticing them.
So here is what patience, rightly understood, should produce in us. First, praise. How many spaces and moments have we moved through — sustained, protected, provided for — without ever acknowledging that God’s sovereign hand was on us the entire time? How much have we taken for granted simply because it did not feel like a miracle?
And second, if God has been faithful in all of those uncounted moments, what right do we have to worry that He has suddenly stopped? That He is no longer holding our hand, no longer ordering our steps, no longer moving on our behalf?
Patience, then, is not simply waiting. It is a mark of spiritual maturity. It is the evidence of a growing relationship with God — one in which our memory of His faithfulness is strong enough to steady us in the moments when we cannot see what He is doing.
When we are impatient, we are in some sense telling God: I know you brought me through all of that — but I am not sure about this. That is spiritual immaturity. And God, as a loving Father, is calling us to grow beyond it.
James was uniquely positioned to speak on this. As the brother of Jesus, he knew firsthand what it meant to develop — gradually, humbly — a relationship with the Lord. Things do not always go according to our plan. But we can always trust that God has one.
On this incredible Tuesday, I want to encourage you: walk in maturity. Walk in patience. I pray this has blessed you. I cannot wait to talk with you again. Have an incredible day.