Patience is Fruit
Patience Is Fruit
“The LORD is good to those who depend on Him, to those who search for Him. So it is good to wait quietly for salvation to come from the LORD. Lamentations 3:25-26
Farming is one of the toughest ways to make a living. There is so much that's out of the farmers control, from the weather to the quality of seed, the ultimate health of the animals, the cost of products, and more. A farmer must learn, overtime, to trust in the long game. He also must learn the valuable art of patience, because what he plants in one season will be the harvest of the next, and there is literally no speeding up the process. Growth will happen in its own sweet time. Patience, for a farmer, is a necessary characteristic.
Time and time again, the Bible promises us that patience is its own reward, but not its only reward. Yet we human beings are, by nature, an impatient lot. We know what we want, and we know when we want it: right now!
We live in an imperfect world inhabited by imperfect family members, imperfect friends, imperfect acquaintances, imperfect coworkers, and imperfect strangers. Sometimes we inherit troubles from these imperfect people, and sometimes we create troubles for others. In either case, what's required is patience: patients for other people's shortcomings as well as our own.
Proverbs 16:32 teaches, “Better to be patient than powerful; better to have self-control than to conquer a city.” But for most of us, waiting patiently is hard. We are fallible beings who want things today, not tomorrow. Still, God instructs us to be patient, and that's what we must do. It’s the peaceful way to live.
+++
When is the last time you drove down 42nd street in Odessa during rush hour? Or how about 8th street? You want a lesson in patience, try dealing with rush hour traffic in Odessa. This in no way lessons the traffic of major cities like Dallas or Ft. Worth, but we just aren’t used to having this kind of traffic mess here in our town.
I used to be the world’s worst at talking to drivers (yelling in my truck) who were in front of me. Those people who use the red light as a time to check their phone, only to miss seeing it turn green. Or that really slow person who will not move out of the passing lane on the freeway. It used to drive me nuts! Honestly, it still does sometimes.
A very wise person asked me about my patience and driving one time. I said I was horrible. I was being very honest. This person asked me why I was in such a hurry. Was I late or simply impatient. I am hardly ever late so it was just my impatience getting the better of me. I was advised to drive 5 miles below the speed limit in town and see how I felt. You know what? It worked! If I am not in a rush, I don’t experience the impatient frustration like I used to.
Patience is listed in the Fruit of the Spirit Paul gives us in Galatians chapter five. This is something God the Holy Spirit is seeking to work in our lives. It is important enough that it makes the list of how God is seeking to mold and shape us to be in His image.
Think about it! If God wants us to be a reflection of who He is in this world, isn’t patience a pretty big part of being like God? How patient is God anyway? Let’s see . . . Adam and Eve should have been destroyed immediately in the garden. Show should have Cain, and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all the way to David, and down the line to each one of us! There has never been a person who was deserving of God’s blessing or deserving of salvation. If God was impatient, we would not be here.
Examine your own life. Do you deserve any of the blessing of God you have currently in your life, or that you have experienced throughout your life? If we are honest, we should have been thrown into hell long ago. So why not! The answer is more than God is love. He is that, but He is also patient with us.
The Old King James Bible was fond of using the word “longsuffering.” This was often used to speak of patience. The meaning fits what we are talking about. Does our sin grieve the heart of God and make Him suffer? Yes! Does our sin bring consequences into our lives which grieve the heart of God? Yes! Does our sinfulness and that of all people wreak havoc in God’s beautiful world? Yes! Yet, He patiently waits. Waits for what?
God is waiting for each one of us to be given the opportunity to know Jesus as our Savior. The Holy Spirit is present in this world as a gift to bring us the gift of forgiveness and life through faith in the cross and the blood Jesus shed.
There is nothing in this fallen sinful world which would merit God not destroying it today! The only reason the world still exists is God is being patient and yes, gracious to all people. He is patiently waiting, giving every person in this world time to come to know Jesus.
When we talk about our lives and how we are to live for Christ in this world, patience must be at the top of the list. There are people we get frustrated with and we simply write them off. Some have made huge mistakes in their past, so we avoid them. Others simply don’t care, so why waist our time. But each and every person we know or even see is someone Jesus hung on the cross to save. Each one is a person God the Father loves and wants with Him in eternity.
We are here in this world today to be a reflection of Jesus for everyone to see. This will mean setting aside our own prejudices and even preferences to engage people we would have otherwise avoided. It means moving beyond our own comfort zone to reach out to a person with the same love God has for them and then be patient as God works in their heart.
Patience is a fruit! It is true. Let the fruit ripen to fullness and then share the abundance with everyone.
God bless you this week,
Pastor Russ
“The LORD is good to those who depend on Him, to those who search for Him. So it is good to wait quietly for salvation to come from the LORD. Lamentations 3:25-26
Farming is one of the toughest ways to make a living. There is so much that's out of the farmers control, from the weather to the quality of seed, the ultimate health of the animals, the cost of products, and more. A farmer must learn, overtime, to trust in the long game. He also must learn the valuable art of patience, because what he plants in one season will be the harvest of the next, and there is literally no speeding up the process. Growth will happen in its own sweet time. Patience, for a farmer, is a necessary characteristic.
Time and time again, the Bible promises us that patience is its own reward, but not its only reward. Yet we human beings are, by nature, an impatient lot. We know what we want, and we know when we want it: right now!
We live in an imperfect world inhabited by imperfect family members, imperfect friends, imperfect acquaintances, imperfect coworkers, and imperfect strangers. Sometimes we inherit troubles from these imperfect people, and sometimes we create troubles for others. In either case, what's required is patience: patients for other people's shortcomings as well as our own.
Proverbs 16:32 teaches, “Better to be patient than powerful; better to have self-control than to conquer a city.” But for most of us, waiting patiently is hard. We are fallible beings who want things today, not tomorrow. Still, God instructs us to be patient, and that's what we must do. It’s the peaceful way to live.
+++
When is the last time you drove down 42nd street in Odessa during rush hour? Or how about 8th street? You want a lesson in patience, try dealing with rush hour traffic in Odessa. This in no way lessons the traffic of major cities like Dallas or Ft. Worth, but we just aren’t used to having this kind of traffic mess here in our town.
I used to be the world’s worst at talking to drivers (yelling in my truck) who were in front of me. Those people who use the red light as a time to check their phone, only to miss seeing it turn green. Or that really slow person who will not move out of the passing lane on the freeway. It used to drive me nuts! Honestly, it still does sometimes.
A very wise person asked me about my patience and driving one time. I said I was horrible. I was being very honest. This person asked me why I was in such a hurry. Was I late or simply impatient. I am hardly ever late so it was just my impatience getting the better of me. I was advised to drive 5 miles below the speed limit in town and see how I felt. You know what? It worked! If I am not in a rush, I don’t experience the impatient frustration like I used to.
Patience is listed in the Fruit of the Spirit Paul gives us in Galatians chapter five. This is something God the Holy Spirit is seeking to work in our lives. It is important enough that it makes the list of how God is seeking to mold and shape us to be in His image.
Think about it! If God wants us to be a reflection of who He is in this world, isn’t patience a pretty big part of being like God? How patient is God anyway? Let’s see . . . Adam and Eve should have been destroyed immediately in the garden. Show should have Cain, and Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all the way to David, and down the line to each one of us! There has never been a person who was deserving of God’s blessing or deserving of salvation. If God was impatient, we would not be here.
Examine your own life. Do you deserve any of the blessing of God you have currently in your life, or that you have experienced throughout your life? If we are honest, we should have been thrown into hell long ago. So why not! The answer is more than God is love. He is that, but He is also patient with us.
The Old King James Bible was fond of using the word “longsuffering.” This was often used to speak of patience. The meaning fits what we are talking about. Does our sin grieve the heart of God and make Him suffer? Yes! Does our sin bring consequences into our lives which grieve the heart of God? Yes! Does our sinfulness and that of all people wreak havoc in God’s beautiful world? Yes! Yet, He patiently waits. Waits for what?
God is waiting for each one of us to be given the opportunity to know Jesus as our Savior. The Holy Spirit is present in this world as a gift to bring us the gift of forgiveness and life through faith in the cross and the blood Jesus shed.
There is nothing in this fallen sinful world which would merit God not destroying it today! The only reason the world still exists is God is being patient and yes, gracious to all people. He is patiently waiting, giving every person in this world time to come to know Jesus.
When we talk about our lives and how we are to live for Christ in this world, patience must be at the top of the list. There are people we get frustrated with and we simply write them off. Some have made huge mistakes in their past, so we avoid them. Others simply don’t care, so why waist our time. But each and every person we know or even see is someone Jesus hung on the cross to save. Each one is a person God the Father loves and wants with Him in eternity.
We are here in this world today to be a reflection of Jesus for everyone to see. This will mean setting aside our own prejudices and even preferences to engage people we would have otherwise avoided. It means moving beyond our own comfort zone to reach out to a person with the same love God has for them and then be patient as God works in their heart.
Patience is a fruit! It is true. Let the fruit ripen to fullness and then share the abundance with everyone.
God bless you this week,
Pastor Russ
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