“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22-23 NIV
Forbearance, otherwise known as patience, comes next as an area where we can demonstrate the growth of the Fruit of the Spirit. Patience has always been a rough area for me. Patience was never really modeled for me as a child and it wasn’t until my adult years that I had someone in my life who was actually a patient person. God placed that person in my life and I have watched them and learned from them about how to be patient.
Patience is similar to peace in that in order to develop patience you have to endure difficult times, times that do not go as planned, because if everything goes as exactly as you want, there is no need for patience. We can all think of times when the cashier at the store was not very fast or the person driving in front of us on a single lane road was driving under the speed limit. These are mild cases of when someone’s patience can be tested.
Another area is as a parent and it can easily be said that your patience is tested on a daily basis. Your child isn’t doing what is asked of them or they are doing it but at the speed of a turtle. Your child is acting silly during a time when you need them to be serious and they won’t stop being silly. These are just some examples of how a person’s patience can be tested.
However, as a child of God, when I am being impatient, I try to remember all the times I have tried God’s patience. All the times that I have not followed His will, or I have followed it but not completely. I think about the times that it has taken me two or three times as long to learn a lesson as it should have taken. Thankfully God has not given up on me, cast me aside or walked away from me. He has remained right beside me, being patient with me as I learn how to respond to Him, how to understand what He wants me to do.
Now I understand that none of us are close to being like God and being able to demonstrate the level of patience that God demonstrates, but as followers of Christ we are called to try to be like Jesus. We are to imitate Christ by following the examples He left by how He lived His life. We learn about His life by reading God’s word, and we learn what God wants us to do by communicating with Him through prayer daily. As we develop patience or forbearance, the calmer we become and the calmer we become, the more we can work on developing more patience. It is a wonderful cycle of growth.
I pray that as we all work on developing patience or forbearance, that we are kind to ourselves and those around us who are also working on developing patience. God is kind to us and works with us to develop this area of the Fruit of the Spirit and we should imitate that behavior with each other.
Heavenly Father, please be with each one of us as we allow You to work in our lives to grow this area of our walk. Thank You for always being patient with us and not giving up on us like we may have done with others in our own lives. Help us to understand that as we work to develop this area that we will have to face situations that will be difficult for us to show patience during. And even though we will desire to move through those situations quickly, please be with us, and continue to guide us in the right direction. I pray all of this in Your Son’s most precious name, Amen.