Patience…

Photo found here

Happy Friday, Y’all! I’ve been patiently waiting for the weekend (pun intended) 🙂

I’m excited to share this post, and hopefully it will bring some inspiration to you.  If you missed my last two posts that touch on a current book I’m reading, you can find them here and here.  It’s amazing to see what the Lord can do in your life when you submit your ways to him (Proverbs 3:5-6).  I have often thought of myself as being possibly the most impatient person ever.  I hate to wait…for anything!  Have you ever thought about something, not thought about it for awhile, and then have been reminded of it again to discover it’s a work in progress?  Let me explain a little bit.  As I said, I’m so impatient.  I look back at how impatient I was months ago compared to now.  It wasn’t until about two weeks ago (as I was reading chapter twelve of Just Enough Light) that I realized how much work the Lord has done in my life to help me grasp the importance of being patient.  I had not even thought about it until then.

I won’t spoil the chapter just in case you’re reading this book, but I love the way the author describes the importance of patience.  We must wait on the Lord’s perfect timing, and that cannot happen without patience.  We need patience to make us complete, because patience is one of the attributes of God.  I have been praying and asking the Lord to continue to teach me patience, because it is my utmost desire to be like Him.  Thinking about this concept has made me look back on so many different situations in my life.  I reacted in anger and assumed what I was wanting to happen was never going to.  But my impatient heart and not considering the Lord’s perfect timing are what was getting in my way.  If we wait for Him, we will see His perfect plan unfold.  I then began to memorize verses on patience, and I am so happy that I have chosen to because it is also through the Scriptures that we can learn patience (Romans 15:4).  It’s so true that when we wait on the Lord, we don’t have to feel like our lives aren’t going anywhere…we’re not just at a standstill, even though it may feel like it.  Through waiting on the Lord, we can know that something is always going on, and we just can’t see it. We are anticipating what God will do next.  What a comfort that is!  It takes all the fear of “not knowing” away.

Here are a few of my favorite verses on patience:

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.

~ Romans 12:12 ~

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him…

~ Psalm 37:7 ~

I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry.

~ Psalm 40:1 ~

The list goes on…

So, through learning to be patient, the next step we cannot see isn’t so scary because we can remind ourselves of who is in control.  If we walk step by step with God, all we have to do is count it all joy and be patient in Him (James 1:2-3).

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post and have a great Friday!

Stay Tuned!