Patience as a Virtue: Part 2 — Morning Devotions

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Transcript

This is Chris Witts with you again for Morning Devotions. I hope it’s going to be a special day for you. If you were with me yesterday morning, I opened up this topic of patience, patience as a virtue, and God I think works on our patience. Many of us are not very patient and uh that’s an area of life that we need to look at.

And I also said yesterday that there’s some wonderful verses from the Bible that talks about patience. In fact, Paul said to the Roman Christians in Romans chapter 9 that God wanted to show His anger and reveal His power against everyone who deserved to be punished, but instead, Paul said he patiently put up with them. I think that’s a great verse. The proverbs say it’s smart to be patient, but it’s stupid to lose your temper. That’s Proverbs 14:29, and Proverbs 19:11 is a good verse. It’s wise to be patient.

And show what you’re like by forgiving others.

Do you know too that Jesus showed a remarkable degree of patience? Consider the way that Jesus interacted with people. His disciples often misunderstood Him. They sought to stop Him in every way they could, but Jesus patiently loved His disciples. Of course, his enemies, well, they hated Him. They hounded Him in every way. The multitudes rejected Him, and we remember that they cried, Crucify Him. But he wept over the city because of the hardness of their heart.

There’s a very interesting uh little passage here.

We see a time that concerns James and John, and we read in Luke that it wasn’t long before it was time for Jesus to be taken up into heaven, and Jesus had made up his mind to go to Jerusalem, so he sent some messengers on ahead to a Samaritan village to get things ready for him.

And Luke says he was on his way to Jerusalem, so the people there refused to welcome him. And when James and John saw what was happening, they asked, Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to destroy these people? But Jesus turned and corrected them for what they’d said.

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And then they all went to another village. That’s Luke 9:51-56.

So here were the two boys they’re called the sons of thunder. They want to blast this village of Samaria out of existence. But of course Jesus said, Look, violence is not the way, and in patience Jesus rebuked them.

So Jesus was full of forbearance, self-restraint, and he refrained from retaliating.

So Jesus was full of forbearance, self-restraint, and he refrained from retaliating.

I think the big challenge for us is to know when to be patient because the Bible says that patience is actually a fruit of the spirit.

That’s right, because in Galatians 5 we see that God’s spirit makes us so loving, happy, peaceful, patient, kind, good, faithful, gentle, and self-controlled, and the scripture says there is no law against behaving in any of these ways.

So patience is there mentioned as one of the fruits of the spirit. It comes, patience comes to God’s people as he works in our, our heart. It might take a complete lifetime, I guess, to be really patient.

Forgive anyone who does you wrong just as Christ has forgiven you, because he said love is more important than anything else. It’s what has or what ties everything completely together.

But we’re told that God loves you. In Colossians 3. He’s chosen you as His own people. So Paul said, be gentle and kind, humble, meek and patient. Put up with each other. Forgive anyone who does you wrong just as Christ has forgiven you, because he said love is more important than anything else. It’s what has or what ties everything completely together.

One author I read by the name of Neil Pettenga suggests that we use patients or think of patients as motor oil, he said doesn’t oil doesn’t remove all the contaminants in the engine.

But it holds them in suspension so they don’t gum up the works and cause the engine to seize up. Patient people, he said, have a large crank case filled with the oil of long suffering. There it is, that word long suffering, which means patience, and there can be lots of irritants. Patience is like that oil, so the Holy Spirit is there to help us, and I think it’s a great idea, something to work for and something to ask God to help us do, to be patient.

Well, loving Father, you are the eternal God, the giver of life. We thank you for today. It’s a day, Lord, of new opportunities. And when we focus on your care, Lord, many of our concerns are minimised and are given their rightful place. We pray for patience, Lord. May that be ours in abundance, and we thank you in the name of Jesus.

Amen.

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