Be Patient with People

Content library Be Patient with People
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Southeast Christian Church

Sep 23, 2021

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?

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