Patience.. When you think about patience, you don’t automatically link it to love, but when you think of God, who is love and how He speaks of patience, you realize that patience is key in the Christian lifestyle that we want to live.
What is patience?
According to Google the definition of patience is “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious.” This brings me to the first point: patience is only needed when it’s hard. Patience begins when the doubts make you want to change paths, when the thoughts make you wonder whether you’re going in the right direction. This is where the phrase “trust the process” is often used.
When you read the word there are many places where God requires you to be patient. The Bible mainly talks about patience in places when it’s hard as well.
So we can conclude that patience is mostly needed when you start to run out of it.
Patience is mostly needed when you start to run out of it
Why is patience important?
Where there is patience, faith is necessary. It’s mainly when God is silent or when life isn’t moving the way you expect it to that patience is needed. Usually in waiting seasons, is when your faith is built. Faith is not something we can see (Hebrews 11:1), and so is patience; it’s waiting on the thing that we cannot see right now or any time soon. It’s rejoicing and trusting that it is going to be well in the midst of tribulations (Romans 12:12).
To have patience is realizing that God isn’t too late, but He’s graceful enough to wait for you to turn your life around (2 Peter 3:9).
How can we practice patience?
Patience is something that you’ll live day to day, rather than practice in the form of exercises. Patience is in every area of your life. Practicing patience can be by being kind in traffic. By being nice to the cashier after waiting in the line for 10 minutes, by maintaining a loving tone of voice after your child has been screaming. Patience is also sticking to the game plan when you feel like you’re going to lose, stepping out of your comfort zone, even when you don’t always feel ready to. Patience is working even though you get no acknowledgement for it. The more you practice faith, the more your patience grows.
When I think of patience in that sense, I often think of the story of David and how he was appointed King way before he ever set foot in the palace and what he did between the time that he knew and the time that he actually became king, he took care of the sheep. It made me realize the following:
It’s the valley habits that are going to help you survive the palace.
Okay so when you know that it’s the valley habits that are going to help you survive the palace, you know that right now you’re in a season of the valley, regardless of whether your feeling happy or sad. This season is a preparation season.
A verse to clarify patience is James 5:4-7
Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient about it, until it receives the early and the late rains.
This verse was such a blessing, I didn’t expect God to put something like that in the Bible. In this verse the focus isn’t solely on the fruit, but also on parts of the process. Especially the parts that you can’t control yourself. The farmer (in those days) could only do so much when it came to farming which was plow the land, plant the seeds, remove the weeds and afterwards harvest the fruit.
God had to provide the rain. You’ll never see a farmer worrying every moment of each day about when the rain is going to come, the farmers had to wait and trust that rain was coming. Even if there was a drought in the land, they had to believe it’d come some day and keep going about their days. It’s the same thing in our lives. We can only do so much, then we have to let go of control.
Let go and wait. Trusting that the wait is worth it. It’s in those seasons where patience is crucial.
How you wait is going to determine how your palace life is going to be.
When you read the story of David, you know that after he knew he was going to become king, he went back to herding the sheep. He continued working with what he had and starting perfecting the gifts that he already had in him which seemed less important at the time.
In the waiting season you’re either strengthening your roots, so that by the time you start fulfilling your calling, you are strong enough to handle the blessings and challenges that come with it or you can do nothing, and when the winds of your calling start blowing, you’ll be blown away quickly and will have to learn how to strengthen your roots then, but it will be harder.
the higher the tree is the easier it can get caught up in the wind and the more wind that it actually feels because you know the height go up there the closer yard to the skies and it’s just way more wind but now I thought to myself what can help like the tree stand firm even in the midst of the strongest winds it’s not in the stem it’s not in the leaves it’s not in that it’s not in this in the steaks in the branches it’s in the roots if the roots have grown deep enough the plant can sustain anything.
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Big love,
Joy
