Spiritual Fashion

 

You are the people of God; he loved you and chose you for his own. So then, you must clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.                             Colossians 3:12

 

“Clothe yourselves” with, among other things, patience.  The apostle Paul instructs that this is part of what it means to be the people of God.  His use of the verb “clothe” implies that we have a role to play in developing and displaying patience in our lives.  We don’t just wait for God to make us more patient.  This has been my experience.

I’ve joked that praying for patience is a dangerous prayer, but it is a prayer that I encourage you to pray on a regular basis.  One of the ways that prayer changes us is that it sensitizes us to the opportunities before us to have our prayer answered.  It also has the potential to see the situations that cause us to be impatient in a transformative way.  So, begin by asking God to teach you patience.  Then, when you encounter a situation where patience is needed, here are some suggestions for cooperating with God’s patience-building in your spirit.

Press pause and breathe.  When you sense impatience rising up, imagine pressing a pause button on it.  Then take at least one full slow breath.  As you draw in your breath, connect with the Spirit within you.  Realize that in that short pause, you have the freedom to choose your response to this situation.  More importantly, the resource of God’s presence is available to help you respond in the moment.  I stress “respond” because our tendency is to simply react.  And if you’re like me, the reaction is too often impatience.  Pausing and breathing creates the potential for a chosen response instead of a reaction.

Reframe the situation.  Instead of saying to yourself, “I can’t believe this traffic!” use your creativity to imagine how you could use the extra time.  Instead of focusing on the possibility of you being late, look for a different way to see the bigger picture.  Getting all bent out of shape will not make you arrive on time, so how could you use the time you been “given.”  You can deal with being late when you arrive and when you arrive, you may be better equipped to deal with being late than if you tied yourself up in knots all the way there.

I like the way Melissa Eisler puts it:

“Getting better at being patient will make your life (and the lives of those around you) easier and ultimately will make you a happier person. After all – adversity won’t be going away anytime soon – it’s part of the human experience and you can’t escape it.”

Patience also identifies you as the people of God. 

 

Prayer:  Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on us, especially in those moments that would trigger impatience.  Amen

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for teachers that you know today.

 

Song:  In a Hurry - Alabama

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15gT9HByEN4

Waiting for the Weather to Change

As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received.  Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.  Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called;  one Lord, one faith, one baptism;  one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.                       Ephesians 4:1-6

 

I’ve heard it said about the weather in Florida, if you don’t like it, just wait a couple of hours; it will change.  Having patience is a little bit like waiting for the weather to change.  In moments of unpleasantness in our relationships, it’s easy to let the stress of the moment get the best of us.  We can say things we don’t mean, conjure up all kinds of horrible stories about the other person, or even do things that we will later regret.  Paul, writing to people in Ephesus, encourages them in such times to go deeper; “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”

This sounds great but really, how do we do this.  I have to confess that I’m no expert.  I struggle with this.  However, Paul gives us some clues.  First, he says be humble and gentle.   This is a predisposition.  In other words, it involves a decision beforehand to act humbly and gently.  I need to stress the beforehand part.  Before the heated moment comes, it has to be already decided that, when that moment comes, remaining humble and gentle is the plan.  Otherwise, the tendency will be not to act, but to react.  This is not easy by any means, but without a pre-decided course of action, bad reactions are more probable.

The second part of what Paul says is, “be patient, bearing with one another in love” This is to remember the goal of our relationships.  We are here to love God and love people.  we can so easily forget that in the midst of a conflict.  Getting our way or proving ourselves right becomes the goal.  When that happens, love is sacrificed.  If we can keep our focus on love as the ultimate goal, we can then be more patient is trying to work toward a solution in the present issue.  Patience grows out of a commitment to love.  In fact, exercising patience is part of what love does (“love is patient,” 1 Cor 13). 

So two practices to work on today: (1) deciding in advance of a difficult encounter that we will be humble and gentle and (2) keeping love the primary goal.  Give it a go.

 

Prayer:  God, help us learn humility and gentleness in our interactions with each other.  Help us be patient with each other as you have been patient with us.  Help us keep love the goal. Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for those with Covid-19 and their families.

 

Song:  Let it Be Love – Lady Antebellum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQB-BQn6EJ4

Pride and Patience?

 

“Patience is better than pride.” Ecclesiastes 7:8 NLT

 

Doing some research in preparation for talking about patience, I came across this verse in Ecclesiastes.  I don’t remember reading it before, but I know I have.  My initial reaction was, “Why is the Preacher (many scholars name for the author of Ecclesiastes) comparing pride and patience? He talks as if the absence of one would cause the other.  That stopped me in my tracks.

When I am prideful, I inflate my value to be more important than it really is.  More than that, I am tempted to see myself as being more important than others.  I convince myself that I shouldn’t have to wait in line for the Doctor. That person should have already responded to my text, email, or phone call.  Don’t they know how important my issue is?  Why hasn’t God answered my prayer?  I’ve been praying for this for months!  I think you get the picture.  I know that none of you have such thoughts, so today’s message is for me.  😊

Patience is an antidote for prideful behavior.  Why I wait in line, I can remind myself that there are others who are waiting too who are just as valuable as me.  I can also use the time to pray or read a quick Bible verse (or a really brilliant devo from your favorite pastor ever).  Instead of letting my prideful resentment grow while I wait for someone to respond to me, I can patiently contact them to ask if everything is alright and graciously remind them I would like to have a response.  By the way, more than once when I have done this, I’ve discovered that the person I was tempted to be impatient with was experiencing a crisis and led me to compassion instead of pride.  Yes, sometimes the person was just being inconsiderate and ignoring my message.  But even then, exercising patience keeps me from also being inconsiderate in return.  Turning to the issue of “unanswered” prayer, patiently waiting for God  strengthens our faith muscles while impatiently expecting God to answer our prayers leads to what old English translations of the Bible call haughtiness,  a entitled expectation that God should answer my prayer because I deserve it. 

When you sense impatience rising in your spirit, ask yourself some questions?  What assumptions am I making about the person/situation that is the object of my impatience?  Do I sense some movement in my spirit towards pride? 

Patience is a fruit of the Spirit at work in us, so we are not alone in our efforts to summon the patience we need to move away from pride.  Quiet meditative prayer often helps us access the Spirit within us.  Patience is really better than pride. I invite us all to try it and see.  We’ll talk more about this next time. 

 

Prayer:  Patient God, help us see any prideful attitudes in our spirit towards you or other people.  Help us use patience to move away from that haughtiness.  Amen.

 

Prayer Focus:  Pray for the Florida Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, which begins tomorrow. 

 

Song:  Patience Song – Veggie Tales

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PvgcAYVCUWU