Tag: #patience

Patience. Not My Virtue

Ever feel this way? I’ve often said I have about this much [ ] patience….. and yes, I am serious. Patience is not a virtue of mine. I am impatient; I get frustrated when things don’t happen quickly enough to suit me. Basically, LIFE / PEOPLE irritate me with their slowness, and I am tired. Tired of people taking advantage of me and others. Tired of broken promises; tired of being lied to. I’m tired of the struggle to just survive. BUT, I believe in GOD, Who is the Creator, Almighty and Omniscient, and I believe His promises.

“Then call on Me when you are in trouble, and I will rescue you, and you will give Me Glory….. But giving thanks is a sacrifice that truly honors Me. If you keep to My path, I will reveal to you the Salvation of God.” – Psalms 50:15‭, ‬23 NLT

I believe in GOD the Father, GOD the Son, and GOD the Holy Spirit. I believe that just as He cares for the birds of the air and the creatures on the ground and the fishes in the sea, so He cares for me. I am so thankful for the many blessings He has poured out on me. So WHY is it so difficult to trust in His timing? I literally have no way to pay my mortgage or utilities or car right now, as I write this, and no prospects for a job, despite the dozens – hundreds, even, of applications I have sent out. Today I woke up and finally dragged myself out of bed, weighed down with hopelessness and despair, and this is the verse that greeted me:

“The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think.” – 2 Peter 3:9a NLT

If He isn’t being slow, then what is the next step I should take? Most of my furniture is on several online ‘for sale’ boards; I continue to seek adequate employment. Do I start packing? Should I put my house on the market? On my knees in prayer, I beseech the Holy God of the universe to have pity on me; to open an opportunity, to provide enough; to show me His will and what direction He wants me to go. As I write, on the radio Crowder is singing “All my Hope is in Jesus…..” Yes, I believe, LORD. Show me how to get through this dark, dark valley! (And please don’t give me more opportunities to learn patience, LORD!) Amen.

Word

“In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was with GOD, and the WORD was GOD.” – John 1:1 KJV, ESV, NIV, YLT1898, DRC1752

Beautiful. I love that in a number of different versions of the Bible, the words of this verse remain translated exactly the same. Of the versions I looked at, only the NLT was slightly changed: “In the beginning the WORD already existed. The WORD was with GOD, and the WORD was GOD.” – John 1:1 NLT

There is NO ONE like our GOD. Three years ago, I wrote that I was reading Isaiah, and I find that I need those words again today. I love reading this book. It’s part thanksgiving, and part prophecy. I think God gave the outline of the prophecy of the end of the earth as we know it to Isaiah, then hundreds of years later gave the details to John to complete writing the prophecy. (See The Revelations of John….) Prophesy or not, the book of Isaiah is full of beautiful passages about trusting God and praising Him.

“LORD, You will keep me in perfect peace when I commit myself to be faithful to You; when my thoughts are fixed on YOU. That’s because I trust in You. I will put my Trust in the LORD forever. The LORD GOD is my Eternal ROCK. The LORD will keep me safe forever. LORD, you give me Peace. The One who has done everything I have accomplished is really You.” – Paraphrased from Isaiah 26:3-4,12 NLT

Thank You, God, for giving us the scriptures to guide us and to remind us of Your true nature. Thank You for the daily reminders to put my Hope and my Trust in You. Thank You for the promise of the Faith I seem to have so little – but You said all I need is Faith the size of a mustard seed. Thank You for the Gift of Your Son Jesus, and the washing away of my sins. Finally, thank You, LORD, for the trials and tribulations that give me the opportunity to really put my Trust in You and You alone. Thank You for the storms….. Amen.

You’re A Fool… Or No, It’s Me.

Will the prayer I am praying change anyone else’s life besides mine? Be careful with your words!! Am I praying for revenge on someone for hurting me, or am I thanking God for my blessings? Do I ask the LORD to bless those who have caused problems for me, or am I cursing them while asking God to bless me?

“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. The tongue of the wise adorns knowledge, but the mouth of the fool gushes folly. The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit.” – Proverbs 15:1-2,4

Will Rogers said it pretty well, I thought: “It is better for some one to think you’re a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.” My Mom always said “If you can’t say something good about someone, don’t say anything.” Lately, I find myself struggling to keep my mouth shut, and harsh words regarding the most recent hurt slip out instead. Thank God I am a work in progress!

I especially like this sentence: “The soothing tongue is a tree of life…” Think about that! A tree of life. We can do more damage with our tongue than with a knife, because wounds of the spirit are difficult to heal – I know, because I lashed out for years, hurting others because of the pain I felt. I will forever have to guard my tongue in this life. There is only ONE Healer for your wounded, broken spirit, and that is Jesus Christ, the Great Physician. Through Him, and Him alone, are my wounds healed. He can bring healing to you as well, and through your healing, you can reach out to to those you have hurt. In the 12 Step programs, it’s called making amends.

  • Step Eight: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  • Step Nine: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

In our lives, we will have to work these steps over and over. I have opportunities to ask for forgiveness. Most are graciously accepted, but there will always be those that are not accepted. I also have opportunities to forgive – and when I forgive, or struggle with forgiveness, I gain understanding of the consequences of hurt I inflict on others. In some instances, we will need much more than an apology. We need to make a physical or monetary amends in some cases. Sometimes it is impossible to forgive, and that is when I give it to the Great Physician so that He can work His healing power. Revenge for things people say and do is for GOD to deal out, not for us to do.

So be careful of your words. Even in jest, we can (and do!) hurt others.

Faith

“The thought of my suffering and homelessness is bitter beyond words….. Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: The Faithful Love of the LORD never ends! His Mercies never cease. Great is His Faithfulness; His Mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The LORD is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in Him! The LORD is good to those who depend on Him, to those who search for Him. So it is good to wait quietly for Salvation from the LORD.” – Lamentations 3:19‭, ‬21‭-‬26 NLT

“But let all who take refuge in You rejoice; let them sing joyful praises forever. Spread Your Protection over them, that all who love Your Name may be filled with Joy.” – Psalms 5:11 NLT

I am not homeless at this moment, but I have been, in my past. Other than that, I must admit to being in a frightful place financially. It amazes me each morning as I get up to find these verses of encouragement in my emails, so appropriate to my life. God is GOOD. He sustains me in the darkness. The situation that doesn’t seem viable to me is easily doable for the Almighty GOD. I know His Words are true, and what appears to me to be a hopeless situation is, instead, an opportunity for Him to show His Mighty Love and Mercy. I am standing on His Promises that He will deliver me. His deliverance may not be of my liking or my desires, but it will come. I do believe, LORD, help my unbelief! I will put my Hope in Him.

I Am Knit Together in Love

My Grandma, my Mother’s Mom, crocheted blankets for people she loved. I will never forget the beautifully put together blanket she made for my baby. It was knit together in love. My Mom does cross-stitch, and has made beautiful works for all of us. Mine hang throughout my house, and everytime I look at one, I am reminded of her love. Everyone does something to show their love. It may be a tangible thing, like a blanket or a cross-stitch design or a painting or other handcrafted item, or a meal or baked goods. It could be an act of service, or it could be giving up a baby or child, so that the child can have a better life. These can all be put done in love.

God showed His Love in creating us; He knitted us together. As the psalmist so beautifully said;

“You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother’s womb. Thank You for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous – how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in Your Book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.” – Psalms 139:13‭-‬16 NLT

This Almighty God created a beautiful world for us to live on. He knit it together, along with the stars and the planets, for us to enjoy. He also created in us a free will, the ability to make our own decisions, and we have done our utmost to destroy our world and our lives ever since. The God of the Universe didn’t let us slide, but He did one better. He sent His Son, an integral part of Himself, to live among us and to die for us. The Ultimate Sacrifice.

“How precious are Your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can’t even count them; they outnumber the grains of sand! And when I wake up, You are still with me!” –
Psalms 139:17‭-‬18 NLT

What Amazing Grace! Not only did He Knit together the Universe for us, He sacrificed Himself to redeem us from our sins. Whatever other people say to you, regardless of the lies and venom Satan spews in your ears, you have been knit together by God. You are beautiful to Him, and what you do matters to Him. His hearts desire is to Love us, and for us to love Him in return. To show us mere humans the breathe and depth of His Love, Jesus – The WORD – stepped down from His Throne, His rightful place at the side of GOD, for this purpose.

“In the beginning The WORD already existed. The WORD was with GOD, and the WORD was GOD. GOD created everything through Him, and nothing was created except through Him. The WORD gave Life to everything that was created, and His Life brought Light to everyone. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.” – John 1:1‭, ‬3‭-‬5 NLT

“So The WORD became human and made His home among us. He was full of unfailing Love and Faithfulness. And we have seen His Glory, the Glory of the FATHER’s One and Only SON.” – John 1:14 NLT

The point is this: we were knit together for one reason only. To share the ABSOLUTE LOVE of our Creator and Father with Him. Simple, but somehow it becomes the most difficult thing for so many people to grasp. If you have known any love in your life, multiply by a million, and you will still fall short of how much our Father in heaven LOVES us. Are you interested in a relationship with the One who created you and Who knows everything about you down to the tiniest component of your physical body (remember, He made it!), and He knows every thought you have ever had or will have…… ? I have a relationship with Him, and because of that He has made me the Daughter of the King of kings. How AWESOME is that? Your elevation from mere human-ness to being the son or daughter of THE King is just waiting for you to take a small but decisive step to Jesus.

“For this is how GOD Loved the world: He gave His ONE and ONLY Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have ETERNAL LIFE. GOD sent His Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through Him.” – John 3:16‭-‬17 NLT

Have you taken that step and asked Jesus to come into your heart and your soul and your life? My prayer is that you will take that tiny step today as you are reading this. I can promise that there is NOTHING in the whole earth-world that will even come close to it!

Being knit together……

Promises, Promises

Our lives are full of broken promises. When I turned 5, I was supposed to get a pony for my birthday…. in my mind, at least! Instead, my Dad accepted the pastorate in a small town miles away and we had to move away from our little farm. How dare he! I’m very proud of my Dad for doing this, because he had to stand up to hisparent’s very strong objections. I didn’t get my pony; I got a father who had courage and conviction and a strong faith. People continued to disappoint me as I grew up. My first boyfriend went away to college and ended our relationship. At my college, my first roommates lied and snubbed me – I was naive enough to believe that they were going to welcome me and we would be friends. Not a promise, per se, but definitely an expectation. I broke, have broken, more than my share of promises. A marriage vow is a promise, and I went into my first marriage having received the promise of a faithful husband who would care for me, protect me, and stand by me.

With those promises all broken, it broke me, for many, many years.

Look at Cain and Abel, Noah, Enoch, Abraham and Sarah. (Read Hebrews 11 for the background). Issac, Jacob, Esau…. Job. The list continues, through the entire Bible.

“All these people died still believing what God had promised them. They did not receive what was promised, but they saw it all from a distance and welcomed it. They agreed that they were foreigners and nomads here on earth. ….. It was by faith that Moses’ parents hid him for three months when he was born. They saw that God had given them an unusual child, and they were not afraid to disobey the king’s command. How much more do I need to say? It would take too long to recount the stories of the faith of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, and all the prophets.” – Hebrews 11:13‭, ‬23‭-‬23‭, ‬32
(http://bible.com/116/heb.11.13-32.NLT)

God has promised that anyone who believes on the LORD Jesus Christ will be saved from eternal damnation and the fires of hell. Why should we believe that God will honor His Promises? The next time it rains, look for the rainbow. God created the rainbow as a sign to signify His promise to Noah that the world would never again be completely flooded, and it hasn’t been. God promised the prophets of old that He would send the Messiah to bear our sins, doing away with the need for a blood sacrifice. He sent Jesus, His Son – His SON – as the Messiah to die for the sins of the world, and to conquer death forever.

When I finally got sick and tired of being sick and tired, I accepted that I couldn’t fix me. I had to let Jesus and the Holy Spirit into my heart to begin the healing process. I’m not “fixed” by any measure, but I am getting better. In this world, I accept that life will continue to be a struggle, BUT I know, through faith, that whatever happens here, I will spend eternity with Jesus and many loved ones.

It’s HARD to keep our faith during struggles with broken promises. Broken marriages, lies and cheating, test our faith. Bosses and friends who lie and backstab, betrayal from all sides… these things are so difficult to see past when they are happening. All I can tell you to keep faith is to look UP, not down and certainly not around, and place your trust in God. We will be hurt in the life. We will be lied to and cheated on and betrayed by other people. We will lie and cheat and betray people at some point; it’s inevitable as humans. (Thanks, Adam and Eve!) The LORD will never let you down. He doesn’t lie or cheat or betray us – those honors go to the enemy, Satan.

Be thankful for the little things. Do you have food to eat? Toilet paper? Plenty of things to be thankful for if you just look. Pray. Pray often, praising God for our blessings (remember, LITTLE things count!) Pray, Praise, Thanksgiving.

PRIDE, PATIENCE, THANKS

“The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.” –  Ecclesiastes 7:8 NIV

Pride. It has gotten me – and still gets me – into more trouble than anything else I can think of. Don’t tell me I can’t do something, because being told I can’t is like pouring gasoline on a fire. Maybe I shouldn’t, or maybe it’s not allowed; it might just be a bad idea. Just don’t tell me I can’t. My brain turns it into “I dare you….” and then, of course, I am compelled to do whatever it is in order to quench my competitive nature. Yep, lots of trouble.

That leads me to the being patient part. I typically have have about this much patience ( ) before it is gone. A wise pastor told me this years ago: If you pray for patience, God will give you plenty of opportunities to learn it. At the time, I had been praying for a lot of patience. My husband was having serious health issues and was unable to work, and consequently we lost his/our business. I had very recently undergone back surgery and lost my job; we lost our home, and we were having to move into a tiny apartment. That meant I lost my chickens and rabbits and had to find a home for my horse. Fun times. Can I just say here, don’t EVER pray for patience!

“Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools.” – 7:8‭-‬9 Ecclesiastes NIV

Yep, there’s the anger. GRRRR. Why was all of this happening to us? Oh, yeah, this could be part of it.

“Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18 NIV

We were proud of our accomplishments. We had a thriving little gun shop, I was a manager at the local builder’s supply store, we had just bought a piece of land, moved in our custom modular home, and built my little dream stable. We were active in our church. Why did it all happen? That’s a question I’d like to ask Jesus when I see Him. I think it’s related to us taking credit for what we had done, instead of giving our God the glory for it.

That was a lifetime ago. There have have many ups and downs since then; some really hard downs. I blamed God and for a long time I was only interested in me and what I could – and what I could do was to be very destructive to me and to others. Ugly. Now all I can do is thank God for where He has put me, and be continuously grateful for His Mercy and His Grace.

Thank You, Lord
Words and Music by Mr and Mrs Seth Sykes
© 1940, renewal 1968 by Seth Sykes
Assigned to Singspiration/ASCAP
All rights reserved
1 Chronicles 16:34 “O give thanks unto the LORD; for He is Good;
for His Mercy endureth for ever.”

Chorus
Thank you, Lord, for saving my soul,
Thank you, Lord, for making me whole;
Thank you, Lord, for giving to me
Thy great salvation so rich and free.
   
(All scriptures are from the Bible app, at http://bible.com)