Patience!

Patience…….Day 20

James 1:3,4 “…knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”(Memorize)

Even after many years in the ministry, I still learn lessons the hard way from God. Don’t we? God has to sometimes take us through the grind mill and allow us to be churned and burned in order to bring out the right character in us.

At times we want God to get down from His throne right then and there to intervene in our lives and pull up those who have wronged us. We pray, “Lord, do it right now.” But surprisingly God never does that! Friend, when I went through a phase of being misunderstood by people, I fasted for a long period of time, I prayed and read the Word. Yet, everyday I had more barbs coming my way. The funniest part of it all is that, people don’t even realize that they are harming you through their attitudes and words. I waited though! It was excruciating! I dared not move in the flesh! The worldly way of getting the steam out of you and giving a ‘piece of your mind’ to the person who has hurt you will not reap the right results. It would further aggravate the problems, but we need to just allow God to take over the issue and handle it. Though He may take some time, but the results would be gorgeous.

After more than ten days, God slowly moved the hearts of people to come and apologize to me. My, His ways are always wonderful! Well, the agony that I went through during the interim period has helped me to compassionately handle other people. We learn such precious lessons from the Lord through our time of trouble. How quick are we to judge people and give our opinions? Even in the field of evangelism, one needs to have immense patience with the people we are ministering. When I had to deal with people who come from strong idol worship background, it was my love that helped such people to get closer to the Lord. I give them a large portion of love mixed with my strict teachings. Most important I pray for them ceaselessly and wait upon the Lord to do the good work in their lives. Do not give up on people very fast. There are people who have not been to church all their life, there are people who come from an abusive background, poverty, and many other things, each one should be patiently handled and nurtured.

In my own life, I was one of those persons who instantly made a commitment to God. I was a hardcore follower of Jesus who just dumped the worldly things out of my life and never turned back to look at them. I stuck to my rigid schedule of spiritual growth and kept monitoring it like a hawk; however, when I walked into the mission field, I was shocked to see people very, very wobbly, lazy and unstable. God had to take me through a rigorous training program to teach me patience. I have ministered to wives, whose husbands had cheated on them, to patiently fast and wait on the Lord. I have success stories in my list where such husbands have returned back because of the patience of the women. Praise the Lord! The courts are speedily divorcing people and dispatching them because people do not want to wait, do not want to analyze and do not want to change. We live in a fragmented society that does not have patience!

Oh, how patient Jesus was when the mob spat on Him, they mocked at Him and slapped Him on the cheek! The King endured it all for our sake! If somebody has wronged or hurt you, I want you to look at Jesus and keep no record of it. Patience is a gift from God. Ask Him to shower a good portion of patience on you today!