Lookahead: It was at that point that I suddenly “came to myself” and thought, wait a minute! I haven’t asked God about this!  I told her I would print out the contract and read it offline—and try to initial before COB.  Then I cried out to God, and said, “I need more time to consult with You.  How do I stall this nice lady—who is just trying to help me lower my monthly payments—without letting her down?” 

So what is the end game of being patient during God’s tests?           

But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, not deficient in anything. James 1:3

But let patience have its telios work, that you may be telios and holokléros, not leipó in anything. James 1:3 with Greek

As you can see above, the Greek uses four words in the end game definition (1 repeated).

I tried searching the On-Line Peshitta for the Aramaic and Hebrew translations, to see if I could understand the distinction from a Semitic perspective.  (The website is https://www.dukhrana.com/ peshitta/index.php) The Peshitta Aramaic is:

 ܠܗ ܕܝܢ ܠܡܣܝܒܪܢܘܬܐ ܢܗܘܐ ܠܗ ܥܒܕܐ ܡܫܡܠܝܐ ܕܬܗܘܘܢ ܓܡܝܪܝܢ ܘܡܫܠܡܢܝܢ ܘܒܡܕܡ ܠܐ ܗܘܝܬܘܢ ܚܣܝܪܝܢ

ܡܠܐ is to fill; ܓܡܪ is to finish; ܫܠܡ is to be whole, complete; ܚܣܪ is lacking.

Piecing together the word-for-word translation: But to “patience” be the full work, to be finished and whole, something not lacking. (4 words, 0 repeated)

This website is phenomenal.  In addition to several English translation options, the site features a 19th Century Hebrew translation, by Franz Delitzsch.  The latter was very interesting (4 words, 0 repeated).

וְהַסַּבְלָנוּת שְׁלֵמָה תִּהְיֶה בְּפָעֳלָהּ לְמַעַן תִּהְיוּ שְׁלֵמִים וּתְמִימִים וְלֹא תַחְסְרוּ כָּל־דָּבָר׃

And complete endurance will be in action so that you will be whole and innocent and will not lack for anything. (Again, 4 words, 0 repeated.)

Back to the Greek…on the www.blueletterbible.com (Richard C. Trench’s Synonyms) website, I found a comparison among all the Greek terms. (I have sub’d in the root transliterations here):

In a natural sense the telios are the adult, who, having attained the full limits of stature, strength, and mental power within their reach.  Holokléros signifies…that which retains all which was allotted to it at the first…being thus whole and entire in all its parts (ὁλόκληρος καὶ παντελής, Philo, De Merc. Meret. 1); With nothing necessary for its completeness wanting (i.e., leipó)….(like) unhewn stones, as having lost nothing in the process of … polishing…(expresses) that integrity of body, with nothing redundant, nothing deficient…That person then or thing is holokléros..as St. James himself (1:4) explains the word. (Essentially, when James says “so that you may be perfect and complete and lacking nothing,” the “lacking nothing” expression expands out the meaning of the “complete” word.) 

Based on this, we have: But let patience have its mature work, that you may be mature and 100% whole, nothing missing...

This past Sunday, our church had a guest speaker for Mother’s Day.  In the pre-service volunteer meeting in the sanctuary, one volunteer was looking at the guest speaker’s photo on the big screen announcement.  He commented that she looked very young.  Our take: no issue there.  She might be young physically, but I’m sure she’s not young spiritually.  In fact, a lot of these seemingly young ministers that I see on social media have been saved longer than I have.  To my point, does this telios imply spiritual maturity?  And is this verse saying:  patience during God’s tests contributes to spiritual maturity; plus eventually the person’s spiritual condition has been polished to perfection, but without any chunks removed?  Hmmmm….don’t hate me, but I do not believe that’s how it works.

My personal belief:  we are never going to be fully perfected as human beings.  The human spirit, soul, and body will always fall way short of perfection.  But God’s perfect Spirit will live BIG in us, if we ask Him to (with foreknowledge/understanding of what that actually means).  In other words, to act more perfectly, we need to tap into the Holy Spirit. 

I think what matures and gets a “super wax” is our yieldedness to and dependence on God.  The goal is to get to the point at which we are depending on Him for everything—as a result of the fact that we fully trust Him.  Then, life is good.  Are we automatons at that point?  No, we are connected to a power source that enables us to express His Perfect Love.  And He demonstrates that Love through us in a myriad of ways.  Here’s an example of a test/trial that I faced this week: 

I called my mortgage company because my monthly rate had gone up. I had made a lump sum escrow payment and it appeared that they had incorrectly credited it toward principal.  I wanted $ to be put against escrow so that my monthly rate would go back down.  Basically, I just needed a ledger transfer.  I spoke with a delightful lady who said NP.  She said she could help with the ledger transfer, and then said that she thought she might be able to get my monthly payments down even further.  On her end of the phone, she began frantically working to find ways to drop the payment amount.  And on my end of the phone, I was seeing dollar-signs-in-my-eyes as greed kicked in.  Before I knew it, we dove headlong into a refi solution!  She calculated a very large monthly savings for a relatively short extension of the repayment period.  I thought, could God be blessing me now? (A previous re-finance attempt elsewhere had failed months and months ago when they had denied the loan at the last second, because I was unwilling to take on more insurance.)  Before I knew it, she had me pull up a 37 page virtual contract on my PC and told me to start initialing.  It was at that point that I suddenly “came to myself” and thought, wait a minute! I haven’t asked God about this!  I told her I would print out the contract and read it offline—and try to initial before COB.  Then I cried out to God, and said, “I need more time to consult with You.  How do I stall this nice lady—who is just trying to help me lower my monthly payments—without letting her down?”

Still “walking in the flesh à la Gal 5:16” I revisited the email from previous Refi attempt.  I had forgiven and forgotten, but 3.5 months of obstacles and pitfalls came back to me in a flash.  To buy more time, I drafted an email to the nice lady…with my terms.  I essentially wrote, “This is not your fault!! You’re doing a great job…but I’ve been burned before.  So if you can guarantee that this, this, and this won’t happen, we can proceed.”

Finally, I got with the LORD for His take on things. His peace came immediately when I considered not proceeding.  In my season of exploring the concept of “tests” in James 1, I felt like the LORD was saying that I had given the nice lady a test.  And if she met all the conditions, that would be my green light. 

But I was concerned about the follow-up telecons with the nice lady because I didn’t want to let her down.  I started rehearsing possible scenarios in my mind, and then I realized that I was still not fully “walking in the spirit.”  After I forgave her, I prayed and asked the LORD if He could deal with it, so that I didn’t have to have that hard-sell conversation.  Promptly at start-of-business the next day, I began receiving auto gen’d/form-letter-type emails from the nice lady…and from about five other people.  None of them had read my conditions. 

They just wanted me to get the process going 3-weeks-ago-yesterday. She had failed her test, but no harm, no foul: because I had slowed my roll, and eventually passed God’s pop-quiz, ahhhh, peace and happiness….and joy.  I wrote a polite cancellation email, which no one appeared to read for a couple of days.  I later Googled BBB and realized that I probably had dodged a bullet…twice.  But Google doesn’t always know the truth—God sets us free with the truth.  End of long story…calm restored. 

Back on track:  Is this the kind of test the LORD proctors?  In my case, yes; I believe so.  In addition, James 1:3 seamlessly segues into :4, which talks about what to do if we are lacking in wisdom.  Wisdom is something that we get from the Holy Spirit, if we are allowing our comm link to be optimized—with full bandwidth utilization that’s fully proven, of the highest quality, and complete with no dropouts. Can we get there in this lifetime? Why not?