Reactions of Impatience

James 5:7-8  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.
8 You also, be patient.
​Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. 

We have typically three reactions that come out of our impatience:

1. Fight. We are faced with burdens, worry, anxiety, and we want to hunker down and fight through it. Saturdays and Sundays in fall and early winter are set aside for football. What happens at the line when people are playing football, when you see the offensive and defensive lines line up, what are they doing? They are digging in their cleats, digging into the ground, getting ready to fight. We’re like that with our impatience, thinking that we’re going to dig in and fight, it’s going to be us, and we talked about that earlier, where we think we’re going to pull us up by our own bootstraps and see this thing through. Part of that, at times, sounds good. Perseverance is good, and I don’t discount that, but we want to fight through everything and make it work our way in our time. We start fighting through it.
2. Fright. We get so overwhelmed, and so concerned, and anxiety builds up so much in our heads and hearts that we become paralyzed with fear. We become completely incapable (or so we think) of making a decision. We want to move forward, but we are so afraid of making the wrong decision, so we’re scared of that. And we’re scared of the right decision because we don’t know what that will look like. We don’t know where to go, and so we are completely frightened, become paralyzed because of it, and we just sit there. The anxiety continues to grow, and at times even impacts our physical health. You have an anxiety attack, you get short of breath, your chest gets tight, and you think you’re having a heart attack. We joke around because I’m a firefighter, and I’ve been on one fire in just under two years – and that was a little brush fire, but I have been on a few medical calls where there’s tightness in your chest, where you feel your heart is palpitating and you feel short of breath. The ironic thing is that when you start to feel like that, you start getting more anxious and the symptoms get even worse. It’s a vicious circle. Some of us want to fight through impatience, some of us get frightened by our burdens and don’t know which way to go.
3. Flight. We just throw our hands in the air, and we’re gone. We’re done. We’re out. I don’t know which way is up, down, forward, back, anything – except that I know which way is out, and I’m taking it. When somebody walks out of a heated conversation on Duck Dynasty, what do they say? “He gone.” That’s flight. Some of us take that option when we’re faced with burdens or suffering because we’re impatient people. But there’s a fourth response that few of us ever consider. When we’re faced with burdens, suffering, trying to learn patience, we don’t fight, we’re not frightened, and we don’t run. We have
4. Faith. That’s what James is talking about in verses 7-8.

James 5:7b 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.

How many of us are agricultural in nature? I grew up around it, and could theoretically walk you through farming, but I don’t know that I have the patience to wait for the corn to pop up, or the beans, or to go out and weed a garden and take care of the plants in it. But that’s what he’s talking about, look what the farmer does. He plants the seeds in spring and then waits for what is coming sometime down the road, being patient about it until the rain comes. James goes on to say that just as the farmer has learned patience, we should be patient in our suffering and in carrying our burdens.