Patience

We missed "you all" this past week while we were in Franklin, Tennessee, spending time with our kids and grandkids and visiting many Civil War sites. Our emotional tanks got a good filling and we are glad to be back with "y'all." Our troops here did a terrific job of leading and we heard really good things about that!

This past month I have been sharing about the Fruit of the Spirit and how vital that is to the health of our Body here at BFC and how critical it is to our own spiritual and physical health personally. So far we have looked at "love, joy, and peace" (Gal 5:22) and now we want to meditate a while on "patience." I have been anxious to share this aspect of the Fruit of the Spirit with you.

 In Strong's Lexicon of the New Testament, the Greek word is "makrothymia" and it means, "patience, endurance, constancy, steadfastness, perseverance, forbearance, longsuffering, slowness in avenging wrongs." It is used fourteen times in the New Testament. The virtue of patience appears to be rooted in God's love toward us. God is longsuffering toward people in both the Old and New Testaments because He wants us to come back to Him and love Him with our whole being instead of being disobedient and self-willed.
2 Peter 3:9 summarizes this thought with these words, "The Lord ... is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance."

There are two verses in particular that jumped out at me while I was doing a word study on "patience." The first verse is a familiar one to all of us because it is found in that great chapter on love in 1 Corinthians 13: "Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered"(1Co 13:4-5). Though familiar, this passage is a tall work order for us which can only be translated into our daily behavior with the help of the Holy Spirit. If I love someone, I need to learn to be patient with them. Remember that agape love, New Testament love, is not a feeling but something that we do because God has shown us that we must do it -- the feelings may come later.

 The second passage that really got my attention on the subject of patience was: "We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone" (1Th 5:14). This verse convicted me that God often asks us to be patient toward people who are hard to be patient with -- those who are being "unruly, fainthearted, and weak." It is in everyday life that we must learn patience. We need to be patient with our family members, our co-workers, our fellow students, our neighbors and those who are part of the Body of Christ that we belong to. I am asking the Lord to help us all learn patience with one another this coming week . This is truly a sign of real agape love and a sweet aspect of the Fruit of the Spirit!
 
 
Yours patiently,

Pastor Gil