Sense of Futility

If the evidence of patience is that you have space in your life for other people to disagree with you or to have relationship with someone who doesn’t see things the way you do, then our world is void of patience. Scroll through social media for just one minute and you’ll see relentless arguing and pride as people attack one another because of differences. A lot of the world adopts the idea that “Your truth is your truth,” but they’ll pounce on anyone who disagrees with their truth. The world wants to welcome and celebrate diversity, but cannot allow differences in thought and opinion. This is why Jesus offers the perfect solution that our world needs in order to produce unity in a disunited world: patience fueled by love. Patience allows us to accept and love others without agreeing or affirming. It’s only when we are patient that we will have the opportunity to fulfill the mission of making disciples of all nations. Without patience, we cannot make space for disagreements, differences, messiness, growth, questions, or faults.  We often expect Jesus to be patient with us as we learn and grow, but we are quick to impatience when it comes to other people. Over and over again in the Bible, it says that God is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. If our identity is children of God, then we will display his grace, compassion, slowness to anger, and abounding love through our patience with all people. This will not be the work of our own flesh, trying our best to be patient in the most divisive circumstances. We will only grow in patience if we abide in Christ and trust in his Spirit to pour patience out of us. We have the God of patience to rely on, so that we don’t have to trust in our feeble flesh. Reflection/Discussion Question: What do you think it looks like to abide in Christ in your life?

It can be uncomfortable to hear that unbelief is a sin. Unbelief feels like something that we can’t really control. We can easily take the blame for other types of sin, but unbelief feels effortless—we either believe or we don’t, but we feel like we can’t control it either way.  But if we can’t control it, why would Hebrews 3:12-13 say, “See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called ‘Today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.” (NIV)? Why would we be commanded to encourage one another, every day, to keep one another from the sin of an unbelieving heart? If we can encourage one another out of unbelief, then we can control what we believe in. And what we truly believe in will always be revealed in times of trouble. Are we complaining, criticizing, and dividing, or are we rejoicing, encouraging, and unifying? When we put our belief in something or someone that will fail, we will inevitably succumb to complaints, criticism and division, but if our belief is in the solid foundation of Jesus, we can rejoice in all circumstances, encourage one another daily, and bring unity in the most unlikely places.  Jesus says, “Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God; believe also in me” (John 14:1, CSB). We can be surrounded by trouble without a troubled heart if we can turn our belief away from a person or a future circumstance and turn our eyes toward Jesus, choosing to believe that he is always in control.  Reflection/Discussion Question: When do you most often struggle with the sin of unbelief?

I am in a workout group for moms of littles and we had a wonderful play date at Glow Worm Café this Tuesday (I highly recommend for littles!) and my friend seemed to be feeling really overwhelmed with her daughters toddler behavior. I encouraged her then and as I was thinking about it later I prayed for her, thanked her for organizing the play date, and told her that her little one is so blessed to have her as her mama. She said it meant so much to her to have that encouragement at an overwhelming time and we all need it- especially navigating these terrible twos and threenager behavior, haha! The picture is of my own little one going wild at the café, it really is a super cute place!

My friend was married to a guy who had actually shot her. Since she divorced him he has done nothing but cause her problems and she also found out she will have problems having kids because of scar tissue has built up from her wound. Her family doesn’t treat her right and she just was not in a good place. I was able to talk to her show her who Loved her and brought hope in her.