Learning Patience

Thank you very much. Open your bibles please to the book of Genesis chapter 12. Genesis chapter 12 verses one through four. The message this morning is gonna have is gonna be something that God has been teaching me for the last twenty five years, I guess. It's a message that came out of my experience, my life.

I didn't read this in a book. And that's what I was I always when I preach, I wanna leave something for people to to take into their lives and and be a practical or practical Practical. Practical message. And so that's what's gonna be it's gonna be about how to be patient. It doesn't mean how to wait in a doctor's office, okay?

And so how to be patient has to be with some of my weaknesses, the worst weaknesses that I have. And it is impatient. I am very impatient man. If you wouldn't know my latches, ask my wife, and she said, well, it has taken me thirty years to control you. And so it's gonna be one, two, three point.

But however, I think it is God's word that's gonna speak this morning. Verse one in chapter 12. Now the Lord had said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house and to a land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation and I will bless thee and make thy name great and thou shall be a blessing. And I will please bless them that bless thee, and I curse him that curseth thee, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.

So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken unto him, And Lot went with him and Abraham was 70 and five years old when he departed out of Haran. Heavenly father, we thank you, Lord, once again because of the opportunity we have to be here in your house and and to praise your name and exalt your word. Thank you, Lord, for the pastor and his family, what they stand for, for this church, and for the witness, and and we just ask you, to bless them in a mighty way. Bless us too. Help us to deal with problems in Tanto Yucca, and help us to just depend on you and and and wait on you.

Forgive our sins once again. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. In January back in January, I was in in Tanto Yucca. My wife had left me for to be in Virginia to be with our son.

His wife was gonna have a baby and she wanted to be there. She left me for twenty days. Then, I don't know why, but every time she goes away and I'm by myself, I get sick. So this was not this was not a a different situation. I got sick.

But I was sick for the whole month of January. Starting the January 1 to thirtieth or thirty first, I got sick. And I couldn't couldn't do a thing. I couldn't get up. I couldn't go to the bathroom.

I couldn't eat. I couldn't do anything. And for one time, I thought I was gonna die. And I visited three doctors and they gave me medicines and injections. My wife is a nurse, and she was injecting me stuff.

I don't know what it was. The doctors wouldn't know what I had. And right now, I gather there was typhoid fever or something like that. But I was I was thinking that I was gonna leave this earth. And I was asking God, you know, sometimes, you know, I get desperate sometimes.

Let me change that. Always, I get desperate. And I began to ask God, you know, why is this happening to me? Why can't I get up by myself? She had to come and pick me up and take me that's why I'm talking about soap.

Know, for seven days, I didn't take a bath. She said, honey, will you take a bath, Well, it was hard for me to do that. And I was asking God, why is this happening? Then we went to a church in Monterey. We were in Monterey by by then.

And I went to the church and they asked me to preach and I couldn't preach. I said, no, I cannot preach. And then I while he was preaching, God spoke to my heart and said, Juan, you are a messenger. You are my messenger. And what I want you to do is to give this message to my people.

So that's more this morning, I'm gonna bring God's message to God's people. It's not my message. It's God's message. And it is for you to benefit from it. And and the first thing that I learned from this was that I needed to be a patient man.

I needed to develop patience. A few weeks ago, we were in Jacksonville, Florida. Maybe some of you have been there and you know what it is to drive in Jacksonville, Florida. We went to the Orange Park Mall and just to make a left turn, we waited maybe fifteen minutes. A lot of cars, a lot of traffic, and a lot of people getting mad.

Hey, it's almost Wait. That doesn't happen here in Clearwater. Right? No. No?

Okay. We get so impatient. We want things now. And if it doesn't come my way, then I get mad. You know why does that happen?

Because we're not patient. And God wants us to develop patience. So there are three things I'm gonna share with you in order for us to be patient. Because God that's what God wants us in our lives, to be patient. You say, preacher, finish before twelve.

If you don't finish, we'll go out. What is that? It's being impatient. I'm not gonna be preaching one hour. I'll be preaching maybe forty five, thirty minutes, something like that.

But here's the thing. We need to develop patience. And God told Abraham. Abraham, you know what, Abraham? He was 75.

How many of you here are over 70 No, don't tell me. Don't tell me. And God told Abraham, at that time he was Abraham. He wasn't Abraham. He was Abraham.

So he told him, Abraham, you're gonna be a father. 75 years old. And his wife was 65. Now, is that logical? To us, it's not.

To me, it's not. It's something extraordinary. And God always likes to be extraordinary So with and not only that, you're gonna be the blessing of all the families in the world. That was a promise that God made to Abraham. So Abraham said, oh, am I gonna be a father?

Uh-huh. Yeah. You know my buddy? You know, I'm 75. My wife is 65.

And you know what? On top of that, God waited twenty five years more to keep that promise. I mean, Abraham must be a patient man. If God tells you something, would you wait twenty five years for the fulfillment of that promise? Would I I wait twenty five years?

See, this is something that we need to develop. We need to be patient, especially when it comes to God's will. Sometimes we don't understand God's will. I generally, I couldn't understand what was going on. But understanding the situation doesn't matter.

What matters is if I'm trusting the Lord. That's the very thing God is trying to do in our lives. You know, we may get sick, we may get an accident, we may have an engine blowing up because that's what happened to me three weeks ago. We were going to Daytona Beach and our car floated. The car the engine blew up.

And so I took it to one of the mechanic shops, and they couldn't couldn't do anything about it. So I took it to another one. They couldn't do anything about it. And so the guy said, it's not worth it. You're gonna spend 2,500 fixing this car, and it's not gonna be worth it because it's too old.

So what you need to do is just give it to the junkyard. So I went to the junkyard and they wouldn't receive it. So I felt like I had an elephant in my pocket. A white elephant in my pocket. Why is this happening?

Same thing. God wants me to be patient. And another thing I learned from this is that God has hidden blessings in that problem that we have. You know what happened? You must know.

I went to the churches and told them, you know, what happened in my life. And that God is still working with me, trying to get patience. And then churches began to help in this matter. And they gave us $12,000. I wasn't expecting that.

I didn't want that. I just wanted $5,000 to buy a van for the church. But meanwhile, I need to replace my car. I wanted to bury it because nobody wanted it. I didn't have my title and not even the junkyard.

The car junk, whatever. Junkyard. Junkyard. Thank you. She's she's so wonderful.

She's been patient with me the last thirty three years. Now, God has hidden blessing in our problems. What is your problem? What is it that is getting you impatient? Or are you a patient man or a woman?

Abraham had to wait twenty five years for his promise. He and his wife did something on on the worldly side to try to solve God's problem. And you know what? We're still having problems with that. God said, no, you're gonna have a son, the son of the promise.

So he waited twenty five more years. But now, how are we gonna develop patients? There are three things we we must do to develop patience. Number one, we need to listen to God. Bible says here that the Lord had said unto Abraham, get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father Excuse me.

For thy father's house, and to a land that I will show thee. See, this is another thing. God told Abram, get out of your country. And some of you have been out of the country. And maybe not because you wanted it, because you were in the army or the navy or the marines.

But if God tells you to go out of your country, what would you do? That's what God told Abraham. You need to leave your country and your kindred, your family. What would I do if a god asked me to go to another country? I like Mexico because I'm Mexican.

And it's very nice to be there. However, I need to develop patients in my life. In my ministry, the six months were pits. I couldn't do a thing. So God was working in my life.

He wanted me to be a patient man. And so he's working in you too. So but God told Abraham, get out of the country. And if you notice verse four what it says verse four? And Abraham did as the Lord commanded him to do.

So the first thing that Abraham did was to listen to God. He had to open his spiritual ears to what God was saying. See, I've been thirty eight years in the ministry. And I still have to work on my patience. And what we need to do is to listen to what God says.

And then obey as as what God tells us. Many times, I deal with people and Christians who don't even know what God's will for their life. My question this morning would be for you too. Do you know what God's will for your life? Do you know it?

Because if you know it, then you have the responsibility to obey God's will. And that's a big problem sometimes in our lives. We know what God wants us to do, but we're not willing to do it. That's a big problem. So Abram obeyed the Lord.

First, he listened to what God said. Get the out of the country. I will make a great nation out of you. You're gonna be father of multitudes. Yeah, Lord, but I'm 75.

Wait another twenty five years. That's something. That's something. Now, not only we need to listen to God, let's go now to chapter 15 in Genesis. Chapter 15 in Genesis Verse one says, after these things, the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision saying, fear not Abram, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward.

Now let's go to verse five. And he brought him forth abroad and said, look now toward heaven and tell the stars if thou be able to number them. And he said unto them unto him, so shall thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness. Right there, Abram was getting saved because he believed in the We not only need to listen to what is God saying, we need to believe in what he's saying.

Trust him. Do we trust him in in in what he's saying? See, he says, forgive your enemies. Pray for your enemies. Do good to those who despise you.

One day we were in Tantojica. We have a lot of problems. And one of them is to have five sometimes we've had five drunkards came to our church. And one day, one guy came and he began to holler and scream and tell everybody that I was a fake and they shouldn't be listening to me. And and he was screaming, you know, for a few minutes.

And I did nothing. I just stood there waiting for him to finish. Even one of the members got mad at me because I didn't do anything. Anyway, the next day, because he's kind of poor. And the next day, went to the store and buy a chicken, fried chicken, and took it to his house and gave it to him.

And some members said, what are you doing pastor? I'm doing what the bible says. I believe that's what the bible says, and I'm going to obey. So do good to your enemies. Forgive everybody.

I mean, we we ought to forgive not only one time, seven times or seven times seven. That's what God says. Do we believe it? Uh-oh. No.

You know, because I got this man here, this woman here. One day we were in the church. One lady was here and another lady was there. And the pastor said, what happened? Are you mad at each other?

No. We just don't talk to each other. That's not what ought to be in a in a Christian church, you know? We need to talk to each other. I like the fact that we sing and then we go out, and we talk to each other, and we hug, and we kiss.

Oh, no. I kiss only my wife. But we talk to each other. Why? Because that's what God said.

God said to Abraham, you're gonna be father of nations and you need to wait twenty four twenty five more years. So then the bible says that this When when Abraham believed God, it was counted unto him as righteousness. He got saved right there. It's the same thing with us. We're sinners.

We we are in a way to hell. Excuse me for that word in in Spanish. It's not an offensive. Maybe it is offensive here to some. But however, it's in the bible.

And and we need redeeming. We need someone to love us to redeem us from our way to that place. I'm gonna change the word. Because God wants us that. And we want to We need to believe in Jesus Christ as the only source of salvation.

There's no other way to go to heaven, but by Jesus. Amen. That's the only way. You like it? Fine.

You don't like it? Fine also. That's the bible. So if you're here, if you have Christ in your heart, you need to trust him and believe on him. So, back to the sermon.

In order for us to become patient, we need to listen to God's voice. We need to believe in what God says. And number three, we need to obey what God says. Let's go to chapter 22. Now at this time, Abram has become Abraham.

Bible says in verse one, twenty two one. And it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abram. It's not tempt, it's test. And said unto him, Abraham. And he said, behold here I am.

And he said, take now thy son, thy only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah and after and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. Now, this is something that I have problems with. When it comes to the word of God, we need to first count the cost and then we need to be willing to do what what is ahead of us. So God asked Abraham, give me your son, the one that you love, and offer him an important offering. Oh.

What is that thing that I love the most? See, that is what God wants you wants you to do. Offer it in the temple. Offer it in the altar. Offer that thing that you love the most.

God asked Abraham, his son, the one that he loved, Isaac. You know, I had to make a sacrifice for my car. As they were taking a tow truck to one place, I I I wanted to drive, but I don't have anymore a car. It's something that happens. My wife took a picture.

I I don't wanna see it. The guy taking our car. I will never see it again. Maybe we will, but I don't know. God wants us to sacrifice and to put it in a fire, in a burnt offering.

Offer it to him. You know why? Because God wants the best from us. He says, seek ye first the kingdom of God. And all of these things will be added unto you.

It's not a it's not a pleasant sentiment being on the highway pushing your car. Thank God we had an insurance and they brought the tow truck. We went in the tow truck too with it. I didn't know what was going on. The only thing I know is that God wanted me to be patient.

So I need to offer him what is the most loved thing that I have or person. God asked Abraham, his son. It's not it's not easy to give up a son. When our kids have had enough age to leave the house. When our daughter laughed, it was okay.

But when our two sons laughed, I cried for each one of them. I don't know. But anyway, it's like that when one of your children leave the house and you don't wanna let him go, but you need to do it. We need to do it. What is it that we love the most that we don't wanna that we want to withheld?

We're not gonna give up. Well, that's what God wants you to do it. Because he wants us to trust in him. Not in this situation, not because we have bunch of dollars coming in, not because we have no. He wants us to just lean on him.

Thank you, Lord. For what happened in my life. Thank you, Lord, because I got sick. Thank you, Lord, because we lost our car. Thank you, Lord, because we don't have anything in our pockets.

Thank you, Lord, because I needed to rest one month. Out of this year, I have already rested one month completely. Why? God God wants me to be patient, and so he wants you to do, to work to be. Are we patient?

Are we listening to God? Are we opening our eyes or our ears spiritually? And are we willing to obey what God is telling us? That's one of the hardest things to do, obey God. It's alright to believe in him.

It's alright to listen to him, but don't ask me to obey him. No, I'm not asking you. The word of God is. Trust him, obey, Believe. Listen.

Hear what he has to say. Now, you might be here and you don't know if you die, you go to heaven. The only answer for that is to accept Christ in your heart. I am not sure, and I don't know anybody here. I know a few people.

But if you're here and you haven't accepted Christ in your heart, you need to accept Christ into your heart. Because that's the only way that will will get you to heaven. Second invitation I'm gonna make is that if you have been losing your temper lately, let's say this morning when you were leaving, house to go to church, maybe yesterday, And you said, preacher, I'm not a very patient man. I'm gonna ask God to give me patience. I was gonna say, don't ask him because he's gonna give you trouble.

But you need to ask God to make you a patient man or a patient woman. And if you're here and you might be listening to God's voice to go into the field of ministry, pastor, missionary, preacher, evangelist, and you wanna answer to that call. Don't delay. Obey God. You're sure.

When you obey God, you're you're sure. You're safe. You have you're in a safety environment. He is taking care of you. Even though you don't notice it, God is there.

I heard an illustration this week. I don't know who said it. A teacher, when you go to school, usually teachers give you quizzes and exams, tests. And while you are being test I heard it yesterday. God is not dead.

While you're being test, the teacher is quiet. Is God testing us? Do we do we hear God? If we don't hear him when we are being test, he's there. It doesn't matter if we if we listen to him or not.

He is there. He will be with us always. That's what Jesus said. I will never forsake you. I will never forsake you and what's the other word?

Leave you and forsake or forsake you. Don't faint. Yeah. It's easy to give up. It's easy to say, God doesn't know what's going on in my life.

No. No. No. No. He does.

And he's there for you and for me. So what is gonna be your decision this morning? You're gonna accept Christ as your savior? Are you gonna ask God to forgive you of of your impatience and ask him for patience? Or are you gonna answer the call to the minister?

See, brother, I don't know. We were in the Taste Association last week. There are only six preachers in our association who are 40. All of the rest is old people. Six preachers only, 40.

Young people are not surrendering. And one of the things I believe that why they're not surrendering to the ministry is because we preachers never ask them to surrender their lives to the ministry. Maybe God is touching the hearts of somebody here. I don't know. But if you feel the God you you understand that God is calling you to go into the mission field or to be a preacher or pastor, evangelist, don't delay.

Answer that call right now, this morning. Because that's what God wants you to do. As we stand up to sing a song of invitation, a hymn, What number is in front of you? 252. 252 if God is calling you to do something.

252. Come up this morning here to the altar. You don't have to talk to me. But if God is calling you to do something, come right now. Let's stand if you would take your hymn books turn to 252.

Lord has spoke to your heart today. Brother Juan preached from God's word. Would you please come as we begin to sing? Give your life to him. Surrender whatever it is you're holding on to or come to him to be your Lord and savior.

Yes. Only trust him. Two fifty two. Come as we sing. Just one more verse at least but I know the Lord spoke to me about being patient.

I wasn't very patient when I left the house this morning. I get I get ready right at the last moment and run out the door and my son was ready all except for two or three things which he puts off and then I'm out the door and then he's, he's got to go get this and go get that. And he's been ready for half an hour just hadn't got this and that. You know, and just occurred to me, I wasn't very patient, you know, and sometimes it's the people that we are closest to that we have the least patience with. And maybe the Lord has spoke to your heart today about being patient.

If he has, don't sing the next verse. Just talk to him in prayer about it. Amen. On the second. Thank you, brother Juan.