ICS Daily Devotions
Patience Is Powerful
Gal 5:22: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
There is one outstanding spiritual quality that we do not always emphasize as much as some others, but it also belongs to the list of the spiritual fruits that Paul the Apostle mentions in the Book of Galatians. It is patience.
The Greek word for “patience” comes from two words meaning, “long-tempered.” It is a very important quality that can make your life stable and happy. If you are patient, for instance, you are slow to anger. You will be able to endure personal wrongs without retaliating. You will have strength to graciously bear with others’ imperfections, faults, and differences. You will give people time to change and room to make mistakes without coming down hard on them. It can be handy both for singles and marital couples. Patience can save your marriage.
In the church history, there is circulating story about Dr. Thomas Cooper who was a man who had developed the quality of patience to a great extent. During the late 1500’s, Dr. Cooper edited a dictionary with the addition of 33,000 words. He had been collecting materials for eight years. But he had a problem. He did not marry happily. His wife, a rather difficult impulsive woman, cheated on him at occasions and his university colleagues advised him to divorce, which was very unusual at that time. But he was patient with her. One day while he was gone, his wife went into his study room and burned all of his notes under the pretense of fearing that he would kill himself with study. She did not like him to work at nights. Eight years of work turned into a pile of ashes!
When Dr. Cooper came home and saw the destruction, he asked who had done it. His wife told him boldly that she had done it. The patient man heaved a deep sigh and said, “Oh woman, you have given a world of trouble!” Then he quietly sat down to another eight years of hard labor, to replace the notes which she had destroyed! The question is: have we been patient enough compared to this man? His patience was eventually rewarded. The Queen Elisabeth greatly enjoyed his finished dictionary, one of the early English classics, and it opened the way for him to become the bishop of Lincoln. Patience is invisible, works quietly, it can even be irritating for some, but it has a tremendous impact!
If we do not get a prayer answer immediately or something is postponed, we can either see it positively as ”patience training” or negatively as “delay”. But since we run into problems with delay all the time, our life would be just filled with frustration and nothing else. Therefore, God wants us to train patience. Sometimes, patience can just simply help you to survive a miserable day, without you saying or doing things that you would eventually regret. Patience (or forbearance) is sometimes defined as a state of endurance under difficult circumstances such as: perseverance and the ability to wait in the face of delay; provocation without responding in negative annoyance and anger; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties. Patience is the level of endurance one can have before negativity. In other words, patience protects you from negativism!
Patience is two-fold. For the first, it has an outward, inter-personal, and practical value. In this regard, the quality of being patient is the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like. It can prevent you honking in the traffic or complaining in slow-moving lines. In other words, you are “slow to anger,” as Paul writes to Timothy. And secondly, patience has an inward, personal and spiritual value that lays foundation for our character. It is an ability or willingness to suppress restlessness or annoyance when confronted with delay. It is the authentic fruit of the Spirit that brings us spiritual blessing and maturity.
Sermon Series: The Power of Patience
