2 Tim 2:24-26 And the Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will. 
	We have looked at being a bond-servant of the Lord from two vantage points. The first was from the vantage point of how we are to be seen in our obedience and reverence to the Lord before outsiders. We are to look at them through the love of Christ and seek to win them unto the Lord by our expression of the very character and nature of Christ, Who now indwells us. The other vantage point was that of our behavior and testimony of Christ within the fellowship, within the church. We are to deal with each other as the Lord so lovingly and kindly and patiently works out His dealings in us. We never give up on each other and we encourage and we support and cover each other in all the loving-kindness and grace and mercy and prayers with which we have been so loved. 
	This morning, there is another aspect of this verse, that we want to consider as carried forward in line with Gal 5:22+23, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. As we are to be indwelled by these governing characteristics of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the effective and perfecting work of the Holy Spirit, so is there a testimony that is to be evident in our lives before God Almighty. There is to be in place within our lives, within our beings, within the witness and the outworking of all our relationships this fruit of the Spirit. It is to override any of our earthly wants and desires, fears and emotions, responses and reactions. This is held in the seemingly most difficult matter of utter obedience in patience that wars continually with our human nature. 
Please do not misunderstand on this point. Every aspect of the fruit of the Spirit is utterly contrary to our old nature, dead in its sin and trespass. This morning’s focus, however, is the testimony that we are to have before God that infuses together every aspect of what is now true of us in Jesus Christ. 
	James highlights this in a rich metaphor of what is now to be true of us as we learn to lean whole-heartedly and fully on the Lord. James 5:7-11 Be patient, therefore, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains. You too be patient; strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not complain, brethren, against one another, that you yourselves may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing right at the door. As an example, brethren, of suffering and patience, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord's dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful. 
	Consider a farmer. He toils for months under the hot sun. He prepares the soil with sweat and with aching muscles and painfully tedious work from sunup until sunset. There is no immediate sense of fulfillment or accomplishment. Everything is done with the hope of the goal at the end of the harvest time. The tilling is done without any reward at hand. The planting is done, but there is no fruit to the labor at that time. The watering and the weeding are done without immediate recompense. Each day’s weather is faced with no sense of return, other than getting through this day and facing more of the same tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. One day at a time, the crop is tended and cared for. The young stalks are protected, but they bear no compensation. The insects are battled, the heat waves are faced, the droughts are struggled through, the tornadoes and the killing frosts are endured, always, always with that eternal hope of the harvest. 
Finally, when the crop is ripe, the harvest takes place, and even in that there is work day after day to gather in the crop before the fruit rots on the vine and the animals tear apart the ripened produce. Then, only after all those months of endurance, is there a brief period of rest, until the entire cycle begins again. And, please keep in mind that we may be called to work only for a part of the season. We may be in the fields, enduring the labor, without ever seeing the end result of those tears and prayers and trials of anguish and heart-aches in our service unto God. This is a vivid and forceful picture of the selfless witness that we have before God Almighty as His chosen people. 
	As Christ tells us in Luke 21:19, "By your endurance you will gain your lives. We must learn to endure the hardship without any immediate recompense. We must learn to be faithful, whether we see an immediate value in it or not. Our eyes need to get ripped from the vision of what we want and what we think we need today, to that which God has ordained for us, now and for all of eternity. We are so man-centered, that if we do not see a benefit in the case of our suffering for today, we consider it to be unfair and too much to bear. We are impatient in our want to have God do what it takes to make us a man or woman of God because we want it right now. 
Thankfully, God, in His overruling sovereignty and His loving-kindness, does His work in His time. Again, we may never see the results of our time of toil and planting in the field which we are given to plow. We may never be the one to harvest the fruit of our labor. But that is under God’s sovereign direction and administration. 
There are some very key questions that are before us this morning, and every moment of our Christian lives that must be faced and answered singly before Him in our hearts. These are not easy questions to consider and to confront, yet they indicate the value God has in our lives. Are we willing to bear up under all the work that is ours in Christ without any earthly reward in this life? Are we willing to so fully submit to the hand of God simply because He is God, whether we receive any benefit whatsoever in this present day? Does God mean so much to us, that we are willing to bear up under all the pain and the trials and the work and the suffering and the abuse with not a single iota of regard as to what we will get out of it today? Can we see the immensity of the value of waiting on God to show Himself mighty, even if that means that we lose everything else on this earth? How much does He mean to us for Himself, Alone, and not what He can give us, or do for us, or deliver to us, or manifest into us? Can we join our hearts into His glory for His Name’s sake, with no a single concern for our benefit in any measure? It is in the answers to these questions that we find the living faith of God! Here is the manifest fruit of the Holy Spirit!
This is what is at the heart of Heb 10:32-39 But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly, by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you showed sympathy to the prisoners, and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. For yet in a very little while, He who is coming will come, and will not delay. But My righteous one shall live by faith; And if he shrinks back, My soul has no pleasure in him. But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the preserving of the soul. 
There is a reward for our endurance in Jesus Christ, through all that we face on this earth. However, the reward is not that which we often think about, in terms of what we will receive. It is reward in the service of the Lord, being so unto Him that it doesn’t matter what we have to go through on this earth. Our reward is that we will behold Him in all His Glory. It will be the complete love of sacrifice for the sake of His Honor and His Majesty and His Worship and His Adoration throughout all of creation. We will be so in Him that we will revel in all that He receives in the course of the lives that we have lived on this earth. This is so far removed from the concept of what we will get. It is set fully into the reality of the life of faith that seeks all that we can give to Him, no matter what the cost, no matter what the road, no matter what the pain and the suffering and the strife. To see Him in all His Glory is to be our single, purposed, heart’s desire.
Once again, we turn to that oh so familiar passage from the heart of God as recorded in James 1:2-4. Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. This is a completely foreign concept to anyone who has any plans of finding earthly glory and reward. There is no manner in which we can understand, or even imagine why we would desire to have our faith in Christ so fully and absolutely tested on a daily, endless basis, unless we have beheld the glory of God in Jesus Christ. In the light of His face, in the glory of His person, in the expressed view of His majesty, our need for personal, earthly significance diminishes with each trial and tribulation. We see that it is through the hard times of our self-death and absolute loss of craving for personal satisfaction and reward, that we gain all the treasury of God’s heart of perfection in Jesus Christ. 
All that we count as so important and so valuable on this earth becomes sifted and fired up in the perfecting flames of God’s work. In the fiery intensity of His Holiness, we are left with only the purest gold, which we faithfully and earnestly and willingly and joyously toss before the feet of our Lord and Savior in worship and praise and adoration. We bear the trials, not for us, but for Him. We undergo the testing, devastating and debilitating as they may be, in order to more perfectly and ecstatically and intently be the living witness of the Glory of God on this earth for His name’s sake. We are molded and formed and melded into the ever increasing purity of the Love of God for the sake of others to see His Glory. Our heart is made into everything that will be honoring to Christ and that will draw forth His praise from all those in our families, our place of business, our school, our places of recreation, and our place of fellowship. Our lives are all completely for Him, no matter what the cost. … No matter what the cost! 
 (Aside)	Thankfulness
Worship	Songbooks		On-Time	Commitment		Scripture	Preparation	Focus		Give-not get
We join the song of the Psalmist in Ps 27:11-14 Teach me Thy way, O Lord, And lead me in a level path, Because of my foes. Do not deliver me over to the desire of my adversaries; For false witnesses have risen against me, And such as breathe out violence. I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord In the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; Be strong, and let your heart take courage; Yes, wait for the Lord. While this morning’s emphasis has been on the need for us to focus solely on Christ for His sake Alone, it is good to leave with an encouragement that we will, Lord willing, take up next week. 
There is the full blessing of God inherent in our endurance before Him. As we learn to live our lives unto Him for His sole benefit, His absolute and full blessing in Jesus Christ will flood our lives. We will not be spiritual paupers living on subsistent wages through the course of our lives. There is a full richness that God showers upon those who learn to wait on Him, who learn to value His glory in the midst of every situation, who lean fully upon Him to be our everything. The focus remains Christ and His glory, but the weight of that glory does come to rest in our lives and hearts as we are settled in our complete service unto Him. As we learn to wait for God to reveal His Hand in action, we are enabled to evermore clearly witness the expressed Glory of God as He moves upon and in us. Let us, therefore take courage, as we are told and wait for the Lord. His blessing is fully upon those who wait before Him. So be it.
And the Lord's bond-servant must not be quarrelsome, but be kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, if perhaps God may grant them repentance leading to the knowledge of the truth, and they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil, having been held captive by him to do his will. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is 1 John 4:11-17. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. And we have beheld and bear witness that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. And we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this, love is perfected with us, that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; because as He is, so also are we in this world. Amen