The Spirit Led Life Part 7 (Patience) Series

Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

Gal 5:23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

I have been preaching on the fruits of the Spirit, tonight we are looking at a very difficult fruit to obtain and that is patience.

Patience-makrothumia- literally translated long to suffer-slow to anger. Something generally we are not.

I remember at the leadership banquet when my guitar came down on Stan’s hand he went on and on about it, he was real quick to suffer and let everybody else know for weeks later that he was still suffering.

People are not very patient are they?

Particularly in our society, I think we honor the type “A” personality who is aggressive and take charge, because he is the one who gets the job done. Quite frankly, that kind of personality is not very patient-

Many of us pray like this: Dear God, please grant me patience. And I want it right now.

I remember the story of the young father who came to the minister and said I need God’s help to be patient with my wife, with my kids, with the people at work, he said “could you pray for me.” The minister started, “Dear God, please bring through many different situations and trials, suffering and tribulation into this man’s life…STOP the young man yelled I want patience not more stress.

We learn patience by practicing being patient, when we understand that God is transforming us into His image as He gives us trials and situations in which we can practice our patience.

You see our lives on earth is merely preparation for perfection, it is just training on how we will live forever in heaven. Boot camp is tough, but it can save the recruits life.

Christians do you understand you are in boot camp of the army of the Lord? What you are going through at this current time is because you are in the Potter’s hands, the refiner’s furnace and He is making you into the image of His Son, IF you will allow Him too.

The times we find ourselves having to wait on others may be the perfect opportunities to train ourselves to wait on the Lord.

JONI EARECKSON TADA

I love this story:

A man’s car stalled in heavy traffic just as the light turned green. All his efforts under the hood to get the car started failed, & a chorus of honking horns behind him made matters worse. He finally walked back to the first driver behind him & said, "I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to get my car started. If you’ll go up there & give it a try, I’ll stay here & honk your horn for you."

The patient person is a person who is still, still means he is not doing anything.

He is still because he knows God is God and God is sovereign- that means a patient person knows God is in control.

The patient person knows he is to be praying, while God accomplishes the work.

Patience: accepting a difficult situation without giving God a deadline to remove it.

Now I am not saying that Christians are to do nothing, God told Moses why are you hanging around, it is time to quit praying and start moving.

What the patient person has that impatient people do not have is, the patient person knows what action to take-because he has waited on God to lead.

Because the patient person is probably close to God, because patience is supernatural- any of you who have or have had children in your home can back me up on that. We need to understand that it is the fruit of patience when we bear it – that causes the world to know there is something different about the Christian.

A patient person can lead unsaved people to Christ, because we set aside what is happening to us or someone we love and we focus on being patient.

It is easy to lose our patience when someone we love is in the hospital, maybe just brought into the emergency room, but if we will pause and remember God is in control, we can be patient with people who no matter what they do seem incompetent to us.

Incompetent, because they are dealing with us or somebody we love.

You can bet your bottom dollar, that 9 out of every 10 people medical personnel deal with are impatient, do you understand what a contrast our lives can be, when we discipline ourselves and show patience.

I know what you are saying, well its only minor surgery when it is happening to somebody else. If it is happening to me it is a major event and how dare you require me to be patient. I don’t GOD does!