“You need to be patient with all of this,” the Lord spoke to my heart as I was feeling exasperated over several things in particular.
“I don’t feel like being patient,” I retorted like a two-year-old. Childish tantrums and self-pity never work with God.
“You may not feel like being patient, but you need to be patient,” God in His amazing love, patience, mercy, and, yes, heavenly Fatherly sternness, replied.
Why do you suppose some of us struggle so much with patience?
Honestly, I believe it has to do with sin and may vary from person to person. For me, I get impatient because I am prone to worrying, fearing, fretting, getting stressed out, not trusting God, wanting everything to happen NOW, and feeling discontent and uncomfortable deep in my heart over big long-term challenges whereby I feel best when I’m going high speed forward.
Not to mention pride. Thinking I know best and the best timing oftentimes without even realizing I am thinking and acting pridefully. Sin, sin, sin. All needing to be repented of. Maybe you can relate, maybe not. Maybe there are other reasons you find yourself impatient. Bottom line, impatience and all other sin accompanying it need to go.
There is another really big reason I believe some of us struggle with impatience. God makes clear in the Bible patience is a “fruit” of the Holy Spirit of God who lives in His followers. We don’t need to come up with patience by ourselves though sometimes we try to do just that – and fail.
We need instead to yield ourselves to the Holy Spirit of God. And, in so doing, we need to live in obedience to Him. When we are surrendered to God and His ways, when we pray and read the Bible, when we spend time in God’s presence, when we are wholly committed to the Lord and to our personal relationship with Him, when we spend time praising and worshiping God, seeking and following Him, etc., then we see the fruit of the Spirit of God borne in our lives. We need to abide in the Lord in the way I just shared whereby the Spirit of Christ bears love, joy, patience, self-control, etc. in our lives. As we abide in Him, He bears the fruit through us! Like patience!
Patience with some of us may seem totally impossible. But it’s in fact totally possible – in, through, and for the Lord. Amen!
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering [patience in some Bible translations], kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NKJV
“For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord.” Ephesians 5:8-10 NKJV
I have a dear friend who has asked me many a time to pray God would give her the patience for her interactions with her spouse, and rest assured she has a very challenging situation in which patience might seem impossible to have. Praise the Lord, God answers her prayers for patience. And, when she falls short in bearing the fruit of patience, she seeks the Lord’s forgiveness and presses on.
Let us all press forward loving and following the Lord with all our hearts – and learning to bear the fruit of patience by the grace of God for the glory of God, AMEN!
“”I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned…By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.” John 15:5-8 NKJV