Be Patient

Patience – Bear with each other

Eph 4:1-6

Patience – define: the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like

The capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious.

I’m sure we all get impatient – but we do so for different reasons. Things you get impatient about will not necessarily what I get impatient about.

And sometimes it’s for no reason or logic

When driving, I am usually a patient guy.

A queue doesn’t faze me

I will wait for other traffic.

Getting a red traffic light doesn’t bother me – I know the lights will change again with 1 minute – so what’s the hurry.

I read a staggering figure last week: The annual cost of people jumping red lights in the United States is. . . $7 Billion!

The average amount of time saved by jumping a red light . . . 50 seconds.

So, I’m fine in the car most times; but I don’t like being late.

So I can patiently wait if I’m early, but if I’m late I’m tapping fingers and getting irritated.

AND . . .you probably know I get impatient when things go wrong – like powerpoints on a Sunday music won’t play (confession time . . .)

Or before Messy church if I still have things to do.

. . . hmmmm…. Maybe a lot of my impatience is about running out of time.

I guess some you can relate to that.

Others here don’t worry about time, but you get impatient with other things . . .. name them. . . . .

In the bible, the word patience is linked with longsuffering and bearing with something or someone others might not (outside of Christ).

We all have things that try our patience.

Can others control our patience?

Of course not – It’s us . . . and through the HS within us

It’s within the fruit of the spirit – forbearance, and self-control (we looked at this a while back).

There was a man whose car stalled in heavy traffic just as the light turned green. No matter what he did, the car wouldn’t start. You know what happened, he was frantically trying to start the car and a hundred other cars behind him were laying on their horns. In the end, through the entire green light the car wouldn’t start. The people behind continued to lay on their horns. Finally, he got out of his car and walked back to the driver right behind him who could obviously see and hear the man trying to start the car. He politely said to the man, “I’m sorry, but I can’t seem to get my car started. Would you mind trying to start my car and I’ll sit in your car and honk at you.”

We are not a patient people.

We’re always trying to figure out how to cram more and more things that need to be done into less and less time. We allow less and less time for things, so we rush and we’re frazzled and we become more and more impatient with anything or anyone who prevents us getting what WE want done.

Did you know that there’s even a church in Florida that advertises a 22 minute worship. That’s right. They promise that 22 minutes after the service begins you will be on your way out. The music is fast. . . The prayers are quick. . . The sermons are only 8 minutes long.

Don’t get your hopes up, not happening here!

If you think coming together as God’s family and spending time in worship, teaching and fellowship is something to be hurried, you are in the wrong church!

(remember last week – the church was devoted to each other and to God)

While the apostle Paul was in prison, we know from our last series that he wrote this to the church at Ephesus ~

1 I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called,

So Paul is laying the ground work . . . he’s in prison for service to Christ and he is asking us to live our lives, just as HE is living his life – even in prison.

He’s encouraging us to live in such a way that we will bring honour and glory to our Lord.

We are to be living examples of Jesus Christ.

To show what it is to follow Him, know him, and have God in our lives.

That’s witnessing. Just as last week we saw Jesus saying, Love one another – and other will KNOW that we follow Jesus Christ; so what God is about to say through Paul