Romans 5:3-5 English Standard Version

3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Other translations replace endurance with patience. Little children can be impatient. Because we are born again into this Kingdom life, we come as babies, having our eyes opened for the first time. We are not born again with patience. That comes before character building.

Be patient as God has been patient with us and has waited many years for you to be born again.It was 8 Shevat 5785 by the Hebrew calendar when I began writing this post. Year one was 3761 BC. We reset the calendar and adjusted the dates trying to identify when Jesus was born. Jesus has changed the world and is changing us every day.

For those who have recently been born again they may not notice much of a change in their own character but others might. I was not aware of just how much I had changed until my son said that I should be fitted for a straitjacket, so radical was my mental facilities changed.

Changing one’s mind helps but is not character building, at least not in this new economy. Some of us address the shift from our old life to this new one as an economic endeavor. How we invest our time pays off in many different aspects of this new life. As with any investment the process may not have an immediate return on investment.

One of the first things that happens is re-evaluating relationships. Toxic people in our lives will be shunned either by choice or because our habits change. We will discover that a new family is a major part of new birth. It took my wife and children a year to join me in this new family. What convinced them that I was not crazy was forward progress and a better life that said I was on the right path.

The decisions we make mark our progress in moving forward toward the goal of discovering Christ in us. That does not come without a fair amount of grace and truth.

Colossians 1:6 which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing—as it also does among you, since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth,

One of the lessons learned on the way is that a tree cannot pick and choose what fruit it produces nor can it produce it by effort but rather by its characteristics, its character. We are much the same. What fruit is being produced in you? Are you even aware of it?

Revelation 7:4 And I heard the number of the sealed, 144,000, sealed from every tribe of the sons of Israel:

Did you focus on the 144,000 or the word sealed, or that those numbers sealed come from every tribe of the sons of Israel? Israel is the later name of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham.

What we focus on will determine what we seek to understand. Many have focused on the number and play a numbers game.

Revelation 7:1 After this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth, that no wind might blow on earth or sea or against any tree.

The word begins in verse 1 with “after this”. Nothing of our understanding about Revelations 7:4 can be considered without having a proper understanding of what came before.

Revelation 7:14 (parsed) “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation.”

Once again we find ourselves delving into prophecies which are spoken about with much discussion, confusion and arguing. No one, and I mean no one will come to a proper understanding of that event until after they have survived the “great tribulation”.

Let us back up for a moment and look at the naming of the tribes that contain 12,000 each. In the list Levi and Joseph are named. When Israel entered into the promised land God named each and every tribe that inherited the land. Levi and Joseph were not named among those tribes. Reuben lost his rights to a double portion as firstborn, as he had defiled his father’s bed (Genesis 35:22 – 49:3-4). His inheritance of double portion was transferred to Joseph, but he did not receive any land allotment directly, his two sons received their father’s land portion. Levi did not receive land because the Lord was their portion.

Ask any of your Jewish friends which tribe of Israel they come from. I have. They don’t know.

This isn’t about what we know or understand. It is about letting the Word of God play out by faith and not arguing about genealogies.

I understand the desire to know what is coming. I too was caught up in the signs and wonders of the future. What I discovered in doing that was that I wasn’t walking in the will of God.

There will always be those who are willing to tell you what Revelations mean.

We can listen to them or we can listen to the Spirit of Truth who speaks to us from the will of God for us for the here and now. How we exercise our free will speaks to our character, not God’s.