Perfected in Patience

Raise your hand if you LOVE being patient.  Anybody??  How about hearing someone say the word "patience" to you?  No?  How many of you would rather get your teeth pulled than have to be told to wait patiently for what you want in this life?  I see some hands now...oh, my own...

Patience is most certainly a virtue.  It takes sacrifice, submission, and surrendering of oneself's wants to wait.  Patience takes, most of all, strength, and it incredibly builds strength in the process.  Patience is an unnatural quality, but it is a naturally abundant spiritual fruit.  Patient is who God is and who He wants us to be so that He can reveal His glory in us and onto us.  Patience perfects us.

Honestly, I grow weary in patience until God reminds me of why I must wait.  I recently bought a home, my first home purchase.  I began looking for a place almost a year ago when I took a call to Texas.  I had to move in July so that I could begin situating myself in this new calling.  Well, when I moved, I didn't have a place to move to.  It was a week before the movers were coming to collect my things that I received word that a family at my new school said I could stay with them until I found a place.  I felt like Abram being led by God to a foreign land.  And just like in Abram's situation, God provides when He calls.

I had thought I would only be staying with this family for a couple of days until I found somewhere I could move to (these were my own plans).  I ended up staying with them eight months.  I had searched for a home during seven of those eight months, and I became frustrated with God.  I couldn't understand why he would lead me to a place and not give me a home.  Even though I was staying in a very nice place, I was still living out of boxes and not able to really call the place my home.

Thankfully, God's patience endures.  He never ran out of patience with me.  I finally realized my failure to see that God, of course, had His own plan.  I saw that I needed to be patient, and that God is a God of perfection in His plan, in His timing, in His purpose.

When I finally surrendered and became submissive to His will and became patient in my wait for a home, God didn't hesitate because He no longer had to wait on me.  He set everything in motion for me to be secured with the perfect home.

His plan is more than we are capable of seeing.  His timing is impeccable.  His purpose is wonderful and glorious.  To experience His perfection is well worth the wait.

As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.

Luke 8:15