Love Is Patience

When I look back at my life, I find that I have not been a very patient person. It is a fruit that seems lacking in my life. When I see things that seem intentionally wrong, or out of place, it irritates me. When people are too hard to deal with, I get frustrated easily and it shows, even when I try to hide it. When I have hard conversations and my voice begins to rise in pitch, I am beginning to lose the battle of impatience and frustration. This really bugs me. This has led me more than once to replay these scenes over in my head and conclude that I am just not patient.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. - Gal 5:22-23 ESV

As I have been parked on the verses from Gal 5:22-23, I have repeatedly had to meditate on this and pray about the apparent contradiction between my beliefs and my actions. The more I dig into the idea of the fruit of the Spirit being a singular thing, love, the more I realize what I have been missing. I see the lies I have been living under. I see that love is the basis for everything else listed in these verses. They are only the reasonable outcome of love. What I had not seen is that we cannot produce love. It is not in us except through Jesus. That means we can only receive love and let it wash over us and flow through us.

Patience then is a result of having been loved well. Unfortunately, I like many others, have held love at arm’s length and treated it with a bit of skepticism and mistrust. In my mind, I know that Jesus loves me. I understand that He died so I could be in right relationship to Him. I also have spent much time pondering how often I have blown it and allowed shame to keep me from fully allowing His love to embrace me. I dealt with forms of self-rejection that kept me from being fully caught up in His love. I am not writing this because I want you all to feel bad for me or think I am an awful human being. I am writing because I believe that much of the Christian community spends way too much time trying to cover our shame and bury our guilt. We put on masks of acceptability to hide our shame and fear exposure. That fear of exposure drives much of our daily lives. We dare not let the mask slip or we are finished.

This attempt to cover our shame is at the heart of our impatience. Our world only works when we can maintain control and anything beyond our control stresses us. We are impatient because we have not allowed the love of Jesus to come into our shame and fill the voids in our lives. We all have needs. We all have weaknesses that we would rather not face up to. We compartmentalize our lives and have rooms we keep Jesus and people from looking into. These rooms are strongholds we keep in place because hiding seems to be the most logical response to shame. Jesus wants access to those rooms so He, in His love and wisdom can change us, can set us free. It is not until we allow Him into these hidden corners of guilt and shame that we can fully experience His love in a way that patience can be produced in us. Patience starts with trust and transparency, both things that I have struggled with.

Unfortunately, this hiding is the same place that the occult takes hold in us. The word means hidden or secret. We usually apply it to secret knowledge, but I suspect it goes beyond hidden knowledge to a hidden self. It is when we remain hidden that the enemy can run freely through our lives. He can keep s in a cycle of failure, shame, confession, and failure. This cycle repeats until the shame is exposed. The stronghold of the occult does not begin with practicing witchcraft. It begins with choosing to not allow truth to expose our sins and guilt. It comes from hiding significant parts of ourselves. This cuts us off from receiving the only thing that can free us, the ever-extended love of Jesus that will come and clean out all the guilt and shame that we keep hidden away from public viewing.

I do not need more patience. That is just the outcome of receiving what I need. I need to allow the love of Jesus to have free access, to love me in the most broken places. As I am loved in those places, control will not be so important. I can allow people to be free to be themselves. When I am free, patience is easy. It does not require me to bite my lip, only to operate as a dam that has a full reservoir of love behind it waiting to be released. Jesus has already filled the reservoir. I only must open the floodgates; you cannot love or let His love flow through you until it overwhelms everything else and be impatient at the same time. It is not possible to look at people while being full of love and hold onto your own inconveniences or frustrations with them.

Impatience is rooted in our own guilt and shame. It is antithetical to being loved. I am now asking Jesus to show me where I have not allowed His love to break down the walls of shame and guilt, rather than asking for more patience. I cannot produce love or patience in me. I can only trust His goodness and mercy to penetrate the broken places that want to remain hidden and set me free to receive. Abiding requires trust and trust is only born in hope. I believe that Jesus is reprogramming us to be His representatives of love in these last days. The world needs Jesus and we need to be full of Him. We need to have the hidden places in us exposed to be able to carry Jesus to those in need. We don’t need more striving. We need freedom, hope and love. That is what patience looks like.

Today, if you feel like you need more patience, I ask you to join me in praying this. “Jesus, I have places in my life that bring me shame when I think of them. I have tried to cover them and wear a mask of respectability, but I am broken. I need your love to penetrate the hidden places in my life. I give you full permission to enter every broken place with your love to displace the lies and set me free to receive so I can be an empty vessel for You to fill. I ask that you overwhelm me with your love until the floodgates cannot hold it back anymore. Fill my love reservoir until you seep out of every part of my being and people are brough into contact with Your freeing love. Jesus, make me confident in the goodness of Your love for me and let it flow to others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGfiKwgsoOc  Jesus is the Answer, Andre Crouch

Here is a picture of what Jesus wants to do in us and through us to bring freedom and transformation to the wors around us. Part of that is bringing us to maturity in His love and letting the fruit of His Spirit flow through us to the nations. You can read it here in Ezekiel and again at the very end of Revelation.

1 Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. 2 Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side. 3 Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man measured a thousand cubits, and then led me through the water, and it was ankle-deep. 4 Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured a thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep. 5 Again he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through. 6 And he said to me, "Son of man, have you seen this?" Then he led me back to the bank of the river. 7 As I went back, I saw on the bank of the river very many trees on the one side and on the other. 8 And he said to me, "This water flows toward the eastern region and goes down into the Arabah, and enters the sea; when the water flows into the sea, the water will become fresh. 9 And wherever the river goes, every living creature that swarms will live, and there will be very many fish. For this water goes there, that the waters of the sea may become fresh; so everything will live where the river goes. 10 Fishermen will stand beside the sea. From Engedi to Eneglaim it will be a place for the spreading of nets. Its fish will be of very many kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea. 11 But its swamps and marshes will not become fresh; they are to be left for salt. 12 And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food. Their leaves will not wither, nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fresh fruit every month, because the water for them flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food, and their leaves for healing." - Eze 47:1-12 ESV

These verses are a promise of the work that Jesus is going to finish through the Church, His Bride, His Temple before He returns. Revelation 22:1-5 is just the picture of the fulfillment of the promise. Philippians 1:6 shows where we fit into the whole thing. We are a part of God fulfilling his plan. He will fill us with His love until it flows out of us, to the nations and brings, life, healing, and freedom to them.