Fruit: Patience

I've been a terrible person about posting things for you. I'm so sorry. I'm also about to go away for at the least two weeks so depending on my internet situation I may not be able to update while I am away. I hope your summers are going wonderfully though. I miss you all and will see some of you at some of the youth events and at the Watertown Mission's trip.

Today's fruit is... patience! Something you all got to work on while you waited for your crazy former youth leader to update the blog she promised to write for you.

Galatians 5:22 (NIV)
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

Nehemiah 9:30(NIV)
For many years you were patient with them. By your Spirit you admonished them through your prophets. Yet they paid no attention, so you handed them over to the neighboring peoples.

Romans 9:22(NIV)
What if God, choosing to show his wrath and make his power known, bore with great patience the objects of his wrath—prepared for destruction?

There are so many examples of God's patience I almost didn't know where to begin when I started writing this. I did my normal search through Biblegateway and even though that helped narrow down the verses that contained the words “patience” or “patient” it did not narrow down the stories that I kept being reminded of as I thought about God through the word patience. But lets not stop there, lets go back to the very very beginning and think about God through the word patience.


How many of you would (assuming you could anyway) create something absolutely perfect and then watch it ruin itself. And instead of destroying your creation completely and rebuilding it you opt not to eliminate it and decide to offered to fix it. No cost, no bad strings attached, nothing that could possibly be bad for your precious and beautiful creation. And instead of trying to control your creation, you give it freedom, you let it do what it wants. And even though it does stupid things over and over again. And knowingly and unknowingly hurts you over and over again you still stand by and welcome it back with open arms and say “I want to make you whole again, just ask, just tell me you want to be fixed and I will do it because I love you and want you to be with me forever.”


I don't know about all of you ladies but I am not that type of a person. I mean, I'm nice, I'm somewhat patient but I am not nice and not that patient. Just like how it works in soccer, if you keep making “mistakes”, even little ones that I can let the other team play through without having to outright call you on a foul, if you keep doing stupid things and “accidentally” making those “mistakes” (aka fouling the other team) I will book you (caution, show a yellow card) or just kick you out of the game for good. So isn't it great that I'm not God. Otherwise we'd all be in trouble, if I were God after Adam and Eve messed everything up and all this other crap happened I wouldn't have kept the earth around. The earth is broken and to be honest, it doesn't seem as if it wants to be fixed, it seems like it wants to stay broke and not give a crap about anything. Thankfully, for everyone, I am not God. Our God is a patient, loving God. Who is filled with joy because we are his beautiful creation. Even though we mess up all the time, God still loves us, is filled with joy when we come to him, and is patient with us all the time even though we messed everything up.


The two verses that you read above (and yes, please scroll up and reread them so you can refresh your memory) are talking about the Isrealites. Now as I said if I were God, there wouldn't even be verses about them. They were pretty terrible at being chosen people. They get all this special treatment and what do they do? They go off and do stupid things. Granted they were technically better than everyone else, but still, they were given instructions and they knew better than to do the stupid things that they did. Even though they sinned all those times though, God was still patient with them. He stilled loved them. And not only does he love them, but he loves us the Gentiles. We are not technically among the chosen people but God adopted us too. He didn't just love the Israelites, he loved us the Gentiles even though we were so much worse than the Israelites ever had been.


This week you will be reading several stories from the Old Testament that embody God's wonderful, mind blowing patience. Since this is only six days worth of reading and I know that you know that there are so many more hidden away in the Bible. My challenge to you this week is to not only do the suggested reading but to leave a comment with a story that you feel God exerts patience in.


Because this is now five days of reading I will now be posting this the suggested reading at the bottom of the page again. I'm going to guess that you've heard most of these stories that I'm having you read from the Old Testament however I want you to reread them with an open mind. Let them remind what a patient and loving God we share. The verses from the New Testament are for the most part just reminders of how we as Christians should act with patience. Enjoy and feel free to call me up and talk about this stuff, I'd love to hear from any of you. Oh, I look forward to you ladies messaging me other stories that you've found examples of God's patience in.

Day 1
Genesis 3
Colossians 1:10-12

Day 2
Genesis 6:5-8:22
Colossians 3:12-13

Day 3
Genesis 9:1 and 7, Genesis 11
1 Timothy 1:15-17

Day 4
Exodus 16-Exodus 17:7
2 Timothy 4:1-3

Day 5
Deuteronomy 9-10
James 5:9-11