To Encourage You

1 Corinthians 13:1 “Love is patient”

Are you a patient person? I can assure you that I’m not as patient as I’d like to be.  Oh, I can sit in a deer blind from morning to night, day after day and patiently wait to see just one deer. I can fish all day, even when the fish aren’t biting too good. But have some person trip my trigger and my patience can evaporate in a moment.  And it’s that kind of patience that the verse above is talking about.  It’s talking about patience with people. 

Impatience is something I’ve struggled with all my life. I don’t like it. I pray about it.  But it’s still there, lurking, unfortunately. This morning the Lord opened my eyes to something about this issue that I don’t think I ever saw before.  You see, strange as it might seem, impatience doesn’t spring from a lack of patience.  Its root cause is a lack of love. That’s the sobering but very truthful reality, for God has very plainly told us in the verse above that one way true love will demonstrate itself is in patience with people. 

But it’s not just impatience that demonstrates a lack of love – any sin does.  Elsewhere the Lord has told us that “the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14).  You see, there is no need to worry about violating God’s commandments that “You shall not steal,” “You shall not murder,” or “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor,” if you truly love someone.  We just won’t do those things to those we love.  And the deeper root of the failure to love our neighbor is a failure to love our God, for isn’t He the One Who has told us that the greatest commandment is to love (Matthew 24:34-40). 

So, from here on in I’ll be praying not that God would fill me with His patience, but that He would fill me with His love, for if I truly love, I will be much more patient, and kind, and more of everything else that demonstrates godliness in a life. 

Love: it’s the most necessary thing, for every other good thing comes with it as a by-product in life. May God help me to love!