God Is Patient
8/27/13
Patience is a characteristic that many of us struggle
with, and it is one that some of us do not have any compassion for either. Patience is not a trait that the world
advocates but demands that things transpire on an immediate basis. There is a purpose for having patience in our
lives and patience’s influx into our lives is vital for the good of
mankind. God created patience in our
lives for a reason for He is patient with us and is willing to sit and wait
until we wake up and are ready to make a difference in the world.
I use the example of myself when this topic comes up in
conversations with my acquaintances and colleagues. Patience is not one of my strong points and I
understand that it is an essential portion of our being and that it needs to be
developed at all costs. However, the
process of gaining, growing and sustaining patience is an enormous task for
those of us who are not abundantly filled with this trait. For a great deal of my life I basically had
no patience with other people and I made no bones about this part of my life
either; I really did not have to say anything about it since my actions towards
others spoke loud enough to them anyway.
I often use the examples of my new life here in western
Colorado as a funny explanation of how God is teaching me patience. When I moved to the western portion of
Colorado I admit that I had no patience with many things and most of the human
race. I did not dislike or hate anything
or anyone but just had no patience with most things. I realized that this was a part of me that I
needed to work on but was not doing a great job of changing things on my own so
I decided to ask God for some help in this area. Now, always remember that when you ask God
for something He will respond in a manner in which that you might not be
suspecting and I call this the sense of humor that God has.
When I arrived in Colorado I found a wonderful place to
work and fell in love with this organization so much so that after twenty years
I am still currently working with them.
I decided to take some classes from the local college that was about an
hour’s drive from the town that I lived in so I would have to leave early
enough in the morning so that I would not be late, a common theme for anyone who
has to commute for some activity.
However, the road that I was to travel on each day was an old two lane
road and it was heavily travelled and sadly to say that many people had lost
their lives on that road due to the one quality that I was struggling to find.
A few months into my travels and a huge sign appeared on
the side of the road that said construction would begin on the highway and
would last for a long period of time.
This meant that I was going to have to rise earlier than normal to get past
the construction area before the workers arrived so that I could get past all
of the delays. One day after I woke up
late I was sitting in line on the highway waiting for traffic to move again and
it hit me that this a way that God was trying to show me patience and to accept
the conditions that were before me and allow others to complete their lives
while I pass by their own areas. I
thought that this was an unusual way of God doing something but accepted it and
moved on down the road when the flagman gave the go ahead.
Being human there would be more days that brought me to
be late on my journey and the position that I found myself stuck in was of a
similar situation. After a few times I
found myself not being very patient with the delays that I was facing due to
the road construction and I soon recognized that this process of patience was
not working and I asked God to find another route of change within my
life. God allowed this continual delay
tactic to occur for almost a year as each piece of the highway was completed
and another section started. As I stated
in an above paragraph, God has a sense of humor and I was about to find out
another aspect of patience.
After some time in Delta, I found a lady that would put
up with my shortcomings and actually still want to be with me. Almost a year and a half later we were
married and another chapter in my patience life began. With my first marriage and her past we began
our life together with two beautiful daughters already a part of our
family. Over the next four years God
blessed us with two more girls for a total of four. Four girls along with a wife will change a
male’s perception about life and where he stands amongst the female contingency
of the family. I am not saying that I
regret having any of my girls, for I love them with every ounce of my being but
God has used the life experiences of these four beauties to get me to realize
that patience is really a blessing to have and that if God brings one set of
examples into your life there is a reason behind it.
See, if I would have learned about patience during the
road construction period of my life then I would have already been ready for
the trials that my girls presented to us then I would have been more apt to
respond to these conditions more efficiently to their situations and would have
probably avoided many of the petty arguments that come into light during this
time. This is where God’s sense of humor
came back into play and this lesson was more intense than the road construction
portion of His trying to answer my plea for help.
Each time that God has to “change” tactics He will
intensify the situation that we have initially asked for, and in my opinion it
is easier to accept the things of change in our lives sooner rather than later;
whereas, if we listen to the lessons that we are going through the first time,
and ten learn from tem things will be over quicker and our lives will benefit
from the completeness sooner which means that we can return to our daily functions
and fulfill our overall destiny of having dominion over the earth.
Let me use another example of how God gives us patience
but this time I am going to place the story on His side of things instead of
ours. My wife and I recently watched a
movie called “The Riddle” and it was about an old manuscript that Charles
Dickens wrote that had never been published.
One of the main characters of the story found the manuscript and was
trying to communicate to one of her trusted friends its whereabouts without allowing
anyone else to locate it. The lady was
murdered a few days later and her friend began to investigate the circumstances
of the murder and eventually became involved in a huge real estate conspiracy
which positioned himself into getting beat up and if it was not for another
person being on the beach at the time, probably killed over the information
that he had uncovered. The person had
been warned by several people, including the police not to get involved with
the scene and that his life would be in danger if he ignored this advice. And as you guessed it he ignored the advice
and ran with his own journalistic curiosity and pushed the wrong buttons until
those buttons finally burst off the shirt.
The friend carried the person investigating the crime
back to his cave underneath the pier and waited until he woke up from his
beating. The man placed the person on the
bed that was in his cave and made sure that the unconscious man was in a
comfortable place while his body recovered.
The man knew that the unconscious person would awake soon and wonder
where he was at but until this event occurred the man patiently sat in a chair
and waited for the other person to regain consciousness. It did not take too long for this event to
occur and the man woke up and had the natural reaction of wondering where he
was at, especially since he did not immediately recognize where he was
located. As soon as the man recognized
the other man in the room he asked him where he was at and the man returned the
question with an obvious answer which was “you are in London.”
The man that was waiting for the other person to wake up
patiently sat in a chair, across the room away, for the man to wake up. He did not move or walk away from the place
but he sat there watching the person until he woke up from his slumber. The man could have left and not cared about
what the other person might think when he awoke but he cared enough for the
person to wait until the person’s own response warranted a response from the
man waiting in the chair.
It has been established that man is the Church and that
God is the head of this Church. Yet man
has purposefully ignored the advice and steering of God and has chosen to take
on the conditions of the world unprepared.
Because we have rushed out and tried to complete things on our own
without understanding the complexity of the scenery that is before us, we have
fallen for many tricks of the world and its leader and it has caused us to
become beat up in the process. This
beating up process has been so effective that we have returned from the world
with our tails between our legs with the assuredness that the enemy would leave
us alone if we sit back and take a sentimental and pity nap for a while. Not only was this a lie to the Church but we
accepted and believed this lie for so long that we are almost in a coma state
of life.
It is at this point where God is sitting in His chair and
watching us to see if there are any signs of movement that would indicate our
willingness to get back into the Church’s functioning capacity to the dying
world. He will never use coercion
tactics to get us to come alive once again nor will He force Himself on us in
order to complete our mission. It is
strictly up to us to wake up and realize what has occurred, where we are
currently located and what we need to do to return to the position that we need
to be, in order to fulfill our destiny.
We humans were created for a purpose and it was not to join forces with
God’s enemy and to allow his lies to control the movements of God’s Kingdom.
God’s patience with our laziness, self adhesion to the
world, pride and general malaise is un-measurable and it should be known that
His methods of patience far outweigh ours and in all honesty cannot be
compared. Many times we have demanded
that God give us answers to our problems immediately. Many times we humans have become angry with
God for the events that take place in our lives and the situations that we are
faced with but if one seriously looks at the overall picture, it is our fault
that we have these problems to begin with and even though we ask for healing
and understanding from God, His answers might not be available for our finite
minds at that stage in our life. So, God
sits and waits until our recovery is far enough along for us to understand everything
that transpired and then He can give us the answers that we need in order to
continue on our journey.
However, we humans, as in my case, fail to get the true
meaning of our situation that God sets before us and we must have a second
round of situations so that we may understand the answers that have been
provided. The path of recovery for the
Church and the mission that she has been given is steadily increasing because
even though we are personally awake we are choosing to live within the drug
induced state that the world has offered and that we the Church have graciously
accepted. The belief that the Church
must align itself with the world has been one of the major side effects of this
drug induced stupor and God cannot do anything but sit and wait for us to
realize that we are being lied to while we infuse ourselves with the world’s
policies
It is time for the Church to wake up enough to pull the
plug on the world’s involvement within the confines of the Church’s heart for
us to realize what has occurred to the Church, where the Church is presently
located and in what condition she is in, and most importantly how we can once
again focus upon the truth concerning the dying world and separate us from it
so that we can honestly reach the world through the gospel of Jesus Christ. The only way we are going to achieve this
action is for us to repent of our ways and completely separate ourselves from
the dependency of the world. The Church
is you and the Church is made up of more than a billion people throughout the
world, there cannot be any mistake that we have the means necessary to
accomplish the mission that has been set before us and there is also no doubt
that we are continuing to suck on the pipe that the world has offered us to
feel accepted in this world.
It is obvious that God continues to sit back and to watch
humanity try and figure things out on our own.
It will obviously become apparent that when things go south God will get
the blame for things no matter what results occur. Another obvious point will be that humans
will continue to fail in acknowledging that God is in control of everything and
His way is the best for our lives and painfully humanity will ignore the
redemptive power of God’s love for us when it is so bluntly available to our
lives. So we choose to sit in the
collective cave and scratch at our wounds and watch the world create more
wounds upon us as if they had no other goal in life. When will the Church wake up and realize her
condition? Time is running out and if we
do not end our dependency on the world we will sit back and watch the leader of
the world destroy billions of people and the Church together, and what kind of
legacy would that bring to God’s chair?
It is an easy process to allow God to show us the answers
that will grant us life abundantly once again.
When the Church makes the effort to say to God that we are tired of the
worldly chains, then God will get up from His seat and begin the process of
restoring us to our feet. But that shall
never happen until we are willing to rid ourselves of the ways of the
world. As the story in the Garden of
Eden God cannot dwell among purposeful and willful sin nor will He act upon
those who do not wish to purify themselves through the blood of Jesus. It is clear that we as humans cannot function
as a holy figure and it is also known that the Church cannot function properly
as she should when she allows the world to run interference with its spiritual
bylaws. But when the Church turns
herself back over to God and allows herself to be purified once again the
anointing of God, not of man’s goals, will fall upon her and she may become the
bride that God intends for His Son. So
if you want to see God move, then we must act accordingly. If we do not wish God to move then humanity
will act accordingly and which scenario would you rather see unfold?
DLB
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