Patience in Life
Today started with my bible devotion on patience. Once the devotion was over, I going to head out to get my morning bike ride. My goal was to get my daily devotion in, go for a bike ride, do my outside chores, go shopping with my wife, and then head out for a family get together. I had it all planned out. God had another plan. He wanted me to have a life application test.
This is when my “patience test” started. I headed out for the bike ride and my tire needed air, and then one thing after another came up that delayed my start. Here I had all these plans scheduled and now I can’t head out on my bike ride. It was not 30 minutes after my devotion and I have my first “patience test” which, I was not passing. How many times a week do we get the same “patience test” and we don’t always do well. Why do we struggle with patience? Do we have to struggle with patience?
Patience is one of the virtues’ we have that seems to get challenged in every part of our life. Our patience is tested when things don’t go our way. Our patience is tested at work, at home, when driving, in parenting, in friendship, in recreation, and in religion. There are many other areas that we get our patience challenged in. You ask recreation? My patience is put to the challenge on the golf course. My patience in tested whenever I get stuck behind a slow group of golfers. Actually, my whole golf game can try my patience. We get impatient with people, things, and circumstances. As Christians we must guard about being impatient in our Christian walk.
Why is it that some days the drive to work can really bother us while other days it doesn’t seem to get on our nerves? For me, it comes down to where I am in my walk with God. One of the fruit of the Spirit is patience (longsuffering).
So, in order for the fruit of the spirit to be exhibited in our lives it comes down to where our relationship is with my Lord. To walk in a Spirit filled life, we must deal with our sins (confess and repent) 1 John 1:9. We need to be in the Word, this is where God talks with us. A good example is the devotion this morning on patience, which is why this is being written.
We also need to have an active prayer life. Give God praise; give God thanksgiving; and give God our petitions. This is the starting point for us to nurture our relationship with God. When this is accomplished in our lives daily, then the Spirit yields fruit in our lives. With patience being one of the fruit of the Spirit, we can have patience no matter what circumstance we are dealing with.
Galatians 5: 22
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Prayer- Ask God to fill us with the Holy Spirit today and help us to live a Spirit filled life.
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