Well, we are making our final approach to the 500th anniversary of the Reformation that will be celebrated on Tuesday the 31st. And this weekend is a big one for you, Pastor John. You're right now in Phoenix, Arizona, speaking several times, including Friday and Saturday at Grand Canyon University, and then scheduled to preach Sunday, Reformation Sunday, at Harvest Bible Church.

Please be praying for Pastor John and his busy weekend in Phoenix. We would appreciate it. Today's question comes from a listener named Barb. "Pastor John, hello. I've been blessed to be in the same local church for 12 years. It's a very good church. Nevertheless, over those years, I have seen most of the congregation come and go.

People who walked with me through difficult life circumstances have left, and I've started over. I feel more and more lonely as the time passes by, mostly because I feel myself becoming more cynical, cautious, and superficial with new people. It's hard work getting to know them, and I know that they will likely move on before long.

What would you say to a Christian who is growing relationally jaded by membership turnover?" I would love to help Barb overcome the drift, because it is a sinful drift, even if an understandable one, the drift toward cynicism or anger or low-grade bitterness. If for no other reason, then it won't solve her problem, and it will only make her own life more sad and miserable.

Then her sense of abandonment will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because nobody wants to be around a bitter person. So several things come to my mind that might help. Let me just offer them to Barb and see if they might be of service. Keep a clear biblical view of this life, this earthly life, this church life, this family life, this earthly life as a season of partly joyful, partly painful waiting for the fulfillment of all God's promises, a mindset of waiting in an imperfect situation.

Much of our frustration, I speak for myself at least, comes from having wrong expectations about what this world and even this age of church life will be. We expect a better church, a better marriage, better kids, better government, better health, better friends, and the reality falls short. And the more it falls short, these expectations make us cynical and bitter.

I know that God is willing to do great things for us, but most of the time we are dealing with people, including the one in the mirror, who falls short of what we hope for. And therefore, we need to get a mindset about this age that is sober and marked by the long view of patient waiting, like James 5, 7 says, "Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord." Now that's a long patience.

It might be to the end of your life. See how the farmer waits for precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it until it receives the early and late rain. You also must be patient. Establish your hearts for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another.

So in circumstances and people around us in the world, in the church, in the family, let us down, James is calling us to hold fast to our hope and pursue the blessedness that comes precisely through patient waiting. Because he says in chapter 5, "Behold, we consider those blessed who remain steadfast." You have heard of the steadfastness of Job and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.

So that's the first thing, a mindset of realistic waiting in an imperfect world. Here's number two. Barb, keep in mind that Jesus himself tasted a kind of holy frustration with what happened with the people around him, even to his own disciples. He said, "Oh, faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you?

How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me." And then he heals the boy. It helps, helps me anyway, to know that there is a kind of godly frustration with the imperfections of this age, including the imperfections of God's people, including the imperfections of the whole system that keeps people moving around, coming in, moving out of God's church.

You're not alone in your disappointments. Jesus himself felt some of what you are feeling. That's number two. Number three, never forget that both forgiving when you're sinned against and forbearing when you're simply frustrated by other people's circumstances or weakness beyond their control, both these, forgiving and forbearing, grow in the soil of amazement at God's grace in giving us such a privileged place in Christ, such a privileged identity.

So here's the passage that came to my mind. This is Colossians 3.12, "Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and loved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another if one has a complaint against another, forgiving one another as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must forgive." In other words, bearing with or forbearing, that is just sucking it up and dealing with the pain and the frustration and the sorrows as well as forgiving those who genuinely sin against you.

He says all of that is preceded by these three glorious realities. You are chosen by God. You are set apart for holy purposes by God. You are loved by God. Isn't it amazing? That's the way he argues. He begins the verse, "As chosen, as holy, as loved, forbear." This kind of joyful confidence in God's grace and who we are in him will make us like a fountain or a spring so that we can keep on giving ourselves in friendship.

This is where the rubber meets the road for Barb, I think. Keep on giving ourselves in friendship when it feels like people only drink and leave. They just drink and leave. They drink from me and then they leave. Jesus says, "The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." Or that's John 4.14.

Here's John 7.38. "Whoever believes in me, as the scripture said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." Now that's our calling and God is sufficient. So be a spring. Be a spring. Be a river. And don't stop flowing when people drink and leave. A never-ceasing spring is a beautiful witness to the all-sufficiency of Christ.

Here's one last thing. Maybe two. I'll squish them into number four here about friendship. Maybe just a few of those friends that have left, maybe you can keep them. Maybe you can stay in touch for decades and cultivate a lifelong friendship over miles. There are one or two people in my life that I count as precious friends.

We have been through some horrific things with each other who live far away from me now and I used to work with them decades ago and they're still precious. And remember, I guess this would be the other of two things in my fourth one. There is a friend, there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother, closer than a sister, closer than a spouse, and he has promised never to leave you, Hebrews 13.5, and will always be with you to the end of the age, Matthew 28.20.

Amen. Thank you for this encompassing view of life that puts our loneliness and our friendships and our broken friendships all into perspective, Pastor John. And thank you for listening and making the podcast a part of your week. Three times a week we publish and you can subscribe to our audio feeds and search our past episodes in our archive and even reach us by email with a question of your own, even questions as it relate to relationship issues faced within your local church.

Though please keep it at the principal level. We cannot address specific issues within a local church, obviously. So keep it at the principal level like this very wisely worded question from Barb. Barb, you did this really well. Thank you. Do all of that through our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

So with Christ's love for the church providing the typological pattern or the archetype as we say for a man's love of his wife, it's no surprise that we get a lot of emails from husbands who don't know if they're on the right track here. What does this look like in our everyday lives to love a wife like Christ loved the church?

That's on the docket on Monday on the other side of the weekend. Until then, I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening and we'll see you then. 1 Desiring God.org Page 2 of 9