An ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay. ~dictionary.com
But that’s just not true. Ability, really? Patience is actually one of those attributes that must be a fruit or a gift because no one could possibly train, study or develop the practice of patience. Right?
Remember when you had to actually hand-write a letter, drive to the post office, drop it in the slot, then wait for the postman to hand-deliver it to someone across the country? It took days! Or when you would go to the doctor and wait for an hour to see him? Or maybe when you mowed the acre of grass with a push mower or made a cake from scratch?
We do not live in the Patience Generation. Indeed, it is an abandoned virtue. I want it NOW can be heard from the grocery store check out line to the McDonald’s or Chick-fil-a to social media and all the way out to your favorite highway!
Anxiety, frustration and restlessness are contemporary hallmarks written across every television, social media outlet and new age book.
Still, the Bible is replete with words of patience, and those words reveal that patience is a gift, and it is a fruit of living in the Spirit. You simply can’t work your way into it or manufacture it. If you aren’t in the Spirit, your man-made patience will blow up sooner or later.
- “But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” Roman 8:25.
- I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love. Ephesians 4:2.
- You too, be patient and stand firm…” ~James 5:8.
- Also see Colossians 3:12-13; Proverbs 15:18; Romans 12:12;
Want to hear a great word about patience, and waiting. Take a listen.
“Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” Philippians 4:6
