Amanda BethSharing the Truths Behind the TRUTH

Jan 31st Monday’s Blog: Love Is PATIENT

In my New Year’s Resolution blog, I talked about focusing on loving others as our primary resolution. For the next couple months I want to focus on what love is as described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

This week, we will start with the first description of love, which just so happens to be the thing I struggle the most with, and that is patience.

My husband would say if you looked up the antonym for patience you’d find my name. Patience is not my strong suit. I remember once rushing through a teaching on patience and having to go back over it and read it again. I am impatient even when trying to learn about patience.

I know I am not alone. During one of my women’s Bible studies, a woman asked us to pray for her to have patience. At once, all the women in the room shouted, “Oh no! You don’t want to pray for that! You’ll be tested!”

No one wants to be tested with patience because that means we’ll have to wait for something. Yet I have learned that waiting isn’t the difficult part. It’s keeping a good attitude while we wait that’s challenging.

I was tested in this area once while studying patience. I was in a hurry one day when I quickly stopped to order my kids lunch through the drive-thru. After receiving my order, I drove away and realized they forgot an item.

As I was grumbling that I had to go back and wait in the long line when I was already running late, my daughter calls out from the back seat, “Mom, aren’t you studying patience this week?” I responded, “Yes,” and asked her how she knew that. She responded, “Because whenever you study patience you get impatient.”

It doesn’t feel too good when God humbles you through your children. However, it showed me I needed to be tested in that area because I kept failing.

May you be strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy.

Colossians 1:11 (ESV)

We spend most of our lives waiting for something. So there are many opportunities the devil can use to tempt us to lose our patience. I lost my patience once when my husband expressed, “The devil is laughing at you because you fell right into his trap.” It angered me that I made the devil happy because of my lack of self-control.

The Bible instructs us:

in [exercising] knowledge [develop] self-control, and in [exercising] self-control [develop] steadfastness (patience, endurance), and in [exercising] steadfastness [develop] godliness (piety)…For as these qualities are yours and increasingly abound in you, they will keep [you] from being idle or unfruitful unto the [full personal] knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).

2 Peter 1:6, 8 (AMP)

Self-control is one of the fruit of the Spirit God has given us (Galatians 5:22-23). When we exercise knowledge (discernment) in situations where we are tempted to lose our patience, the fruit of self-control starts to develop. We don’t instantly walk in self-control; it has to develop in us. The only way to develop it is through times of testing, when we have an opportunity to exercise it.

As we exercise self-control, we start to develop patience. The more we exercise it, the more it develops. When we develop patience, we develop godliness, and then Christ’s love can be seen through us. This is why the devil works hard to tempt us to lose our patience. We lose our self-control when we are impatient and we don’t walk in love.

Moreover [let us also be full of joy now!] let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance. And endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of character (approved faith and tried integrity). And character [of this sort] produces [the habit of] joyful and confident hope of eternal salvation.

Romans 5:3-4 (AMP)

We can face our trials with a joyful attitude because we know we need them to develop endurance, to keep us pressing on and maturing in Christ.

I used to be insanely impatient toward my husband and children. They couldn’t do anything wrong without me losing my patience. I’d always try to change but I only seemed to get worse. I didn’t change until I learned that I had the fruit of self-control in me and I needed to yield to God and allow Him to develop it in me.

This knowledge helped me in situations when I had to use self-control. At first, it wasn’t easy and I failed many times. But the more I leaned on God and kept working at it, the easier it became because His fruit of self-control started to develop in me.

The Holy Spirit’s fruit works the same as edible fruit. It starts as a seed, and as long as you feed it and don’t neglect it, it eventually develops into fruit. When God is working on an area with me, at times it feels like it’s always going to be a struggle. Then one day I suddenly realize it’s not as difficult because the fruit begins to develop.

We need to yield to the Holy Spirit whenever we get in a situation where we are tempted to lose our patience. The more we yield, the more fruit God can develop in us, and the more we will walk in love.

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**Something to think about this week**

1 Corinthians 10:13 says that God always provides a way out when we are tempted. Let’s remember to take that way out this week and practice self-control whenever we are tempted to lose our patience. We can carry this verse to remind us to yield to the Holy Spirit and allow God to develop His fruit in us.

But let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

James 1:4 AKJV

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**Come back next Monday as I share more of God’s Truths and the reasons behind the Truths.

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All Bible verses are taken from the NIV, unless otherwise noted.