Tag: patience

Grace Stoppers

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 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is no law.” (‭Galatians‬ ‭5‬:‭22-23‬ HCSB)

      For the last six weeks, a friend and I have been studying the fruit of the Spirit together. We began with an overview of the Book of Galatians and a few a couple of weeks began to study each of the listed fruit, one per week. This weeks fruit: Patience; oh yes,I heard those groans! If only I had a dollar for everyone who has ever told me “Don’t pray for patience; you’ll get it, but it won’t be fun or pretty in the meantime.”! I would be sitting somewhere warm on a sunny beach enjoying the roar of the ocean and the sun beating down on my face as I write instead of looking out at glistening trees, a cold but gentle wind blowing, and a misty rain gently watering them. Oh how I miss the warm sunshine! 

      Hopefully that provided a little recovery time from the shock of that much dreaded word, patience. We are learning through studying this particular fruit that there are two types of patience mentioned in the New Testament. One is patience through circumstances and the other is patience with people. Patience with people is the type of peace referred to in the fruit of the Spirit. Interestingly, though we are studying this fruit, we first tackled the patience with circumstances and learned that hope is the key to having patience when facing difficult situations; hope coming from the Greek word elpis, meaning hope-the desire of some good with the expectation of getting it. That’s pretty straight forward. As long as we have hope, we tend to be able to press through the less than enjoyable aspects that we sometimes face. Without hope, we find it much more challenging!

     The second patience, patience with people can get much more complex, especially in those closest relationships. Hope may be important in these relationships but perhaps mercy is even more important when we endeavor to grow in patience with the people in our circles of influence and with people in general. Mercy or compassion can be a powerful tool especially when it comes to having patience with people. 

      Just an example from my own life: many years ago, my husband and I were having breakfast in a local restaurant. A customer comes in and is seated across from out table. From the very beginning, nothing went right in her opinion and everyone within a ten table radius was aware. People were getting up and leaving be cause of the scene. We had a birds eye view and could not help but hear as things escalated.  This young waitress did not deserve the treatment she was receiving. As we continued to witness this spectacle, I pointed out to my husband that even if she was performing poorly it was no way to treat her. Maybe she broke up with her boyfriend/spouse, had a sick child, a family member sick or dying. We have no idea what people are dealing with in their lives! We went to the register to pay and Kevin gave me his keys. Then he addressed the manager and explained that we had observed everything and the server had done nothing to deserve what was happening. He then asked me to wait in the car (which I did though it was a hard request to follow).  He said he then said a quick prayer and with the same compassion and mercy I had expressed for the server; he approached this lady sitting with her two adult daughters.  He was very respectful and asked if he could join them for a moment. Then my sweet husband who looked about eighteen with his ‘baby face’, proceeded to ask her with great respect if she’d ever considered that the young server might be struggling with some kind of life trauma or tragedy or had spent the night up with a small child that was sick and sleepless? (We knew this one well as young parents ourselves!)  Kevin said her daughters looked so relived and this lady’s whole countenance changed. They all thanked him and he started out to the car. I met him at the door where the manager thanked him…it had been a while and I must admit I was a little concerned and I decided I needed to check on him.

     In the end, mercy, compassion and patience triumphs! We may not always see results right away and it is possible we may not see results at all. Nevertheless, it is a seed that is well worth sowing! (Lord, please give me the grace and wisdom to remember this life lesson!) Why?  Because even if it does not touch the person benefiting from it, others see. Even if it doesn’t touch the lives of observers, it changes us! It is a sure way to teach us to be more Christ-like by walking in the Spirit and exhibiting the fruit of the Spirit; an intentional though momentary choice to live beyond that moment, beyond our circumstances and beyond our own little world in a place where grace flows freely.

      Grace flows freely where love, joy peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness and self-control abound.  Why Grace Stoppers then? There are also those things which clog and even stop the flow of grace. Let’s list just a few:

  • Hate, joylessness, discord, impatience, meanness, doubt, harshness, selfishness
  • Anger
  • Unforgiveness
  • Hopelessness 
  • Bitterness
  • Jealousy

Help us, oh Father God, to lay these down! Help us to walk by the Spirit, in the fruit of the Spirit 

and in the Mighty name of Jesus!



 Praying you are blessed with His grace, His peace and Fruit that remains!

 

 But what happens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way in life, able to marshal and direct our energies wisely. Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified.”(‭Galatians‬ ‭5‬:‭22-23‬ MSG)

Days of Grace- Day 4

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     In our journey so far we have looked at three examples of grace. First, Noah found grace with God because he and his family stood out above the wickedness that surrounded them. Secondly, Abraham and his family was the benefactor of the grace of God and lastly Moses and God’s chosen people found favor with God as the cord of grace and favor are weaved further through scripture. Our first day we looked at the Strong’s definition of the Hebrew word for grace (Chem). Today, let’s finally look at a working definition of this word grace.  According to Noah Wester 1828 online dictionary, the noun grace is defined “Favor; good will; kindness; disposition to oblige another; as a grant made as an act of grace;  appropriately, the free unmerited love and favor of God, the spring and source of all the benefits men receive from him.” Amazingly, this just covers the first two of twenty definition listings just for grace the noun. It is a very dynamic word!  For more see:  http://webstersdictionary1828.com.

     Now that we have a working definition in our language, let’s look at the next connection in our grace pilgrimage, we will be in Judges six looking at the story of Gideon. The story begins with an explanation of how God’s chosen people find themselves living in caves and mountain strongholds because they have done evil in God’s sight and have been targeted for seven years now by the Midianites. Israel was hurting. After all that God had delivered them from in the past, they still had memory failure and fell into disobedience once again. Now they find themselves in a struggle to get by and crying out to God once again and God answered their cries. His response is located in verse  8-10: “the LORD sent a prophet unto the children of Israel, which said unto them, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I brought you up from Egypt, and brought you forth out of the house of bondage; and I delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of all that oppressed you, and drove them out from before you, and gave you their land; and I said unto you, I am the LORD your God; fear not the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell : but ye have not obeyed my voice.” KJV

     Gideon was hiding out and threshing wheat by the winepress. This is indeed an unusual place to be threshing wheat, normally they would thresh on the hillside where the chafe could blow away and the wheat would fall back to the ground but Gideon was here trying to preserve the little wheat they had from the enemy. An angel of the Lord appeared saying, “The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior.” (Judges 6:12b)  Gideon responded,  “O my lord, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about,saying, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the LORD has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.” (Judges 6:13)

     Then the Lord responded that Gideon should go in his own strength and deliver Israel from Midian and Gideon, much like Abraham had several excuses why he could not do as he was asked.  Patiently, the Lord responded again with these words from Judges 6: 16-17. “But the LORD said to him, “Surely I will be with you, and you shall defeat Midian as one man.”

      Gideon then said to Him, “If now I have found favor in Your sight, then show me a sign that it is You who speak with me. “Please do not depart from here, until I come back to You, and bring out my offering and lay it before You.” Gideon found favor with this messenger and He awaited as Gideon prepared a meal and returned. The angel of the Lord then sacrificed the meal as an offering unto the Lord.  Judges 6:22-24 tells us, “When Gideon saw that he was the angel of the LORD, he said, “Alas, O Lord GOD! For now I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face.”  The LORD said to him, “Peace to you, do not fear; you shall not die.” Then Gideon built an altar there to the LORD and named it The LORD is Peace.”

      Once again we see the great grace that God shows one of His chosen. This is  a man clearly hiding and trying to protect his grain and yet God sees his potential and calls him mighty warrior despite him being of the least and the smallest among his people. As the story goes Gideon takes the first step in fulfilling God’s request. We not only observe that God is a God of peace, we also get a glimpse into the great patience God has with Gideon. God goes on to patiently answer Gideon as he asks for signs not once but twice before he continues to fulfill what the Lord has called him to do. How great is the patience and grace of God throughout all the ages and even in our day, Grace to you!