A PATIENCE CHALLENGE

Submitting to God’s will and living our lives accordingly, which in turn produces the fruits of the Spirit, is the life that God intends for us.  Pastor Mark kicked off our next eight weeks of study around the fruits of the Spirit noted in Galatians 5:22-23 this past Sunday, using the fruit of patience as his focus after we spent the last month studying the fruit of joy. And although it’s not specifically listed in verses 19-21, one of the challenges to patience (with a knock-on effect to others fruits of the Spirit) is a life’s schedule that is too full of works of the flesh, in much the same way as weeds taking over a garden.  For purposes of this blog, we will focus on one of the characteristic challenges of such a life in the form of hurry.  Much discipline is requited for a person to reduce or eliminate hurry.  Satan wants us to become so distracted, rushed and preoccupied that we will settle for a mediocre version of our faith.  He wants us to trade God’s priorities for our lives for the priorities of the world.  He wants so many activities in our lives that we don’t have time to listen to God’s voice that is living inside of us or practice the disciplines necessary to transform our lives into God’s stated desire for us. 

Do you ever get in line at the grocery store, watching other lines to see if you chose the wrong one? Why do we drive 79 mph in 70 mph zones?  One of the great illusions of our day is that hurrying will buy us more time. 

But hurry is not just a disordered schedule.  It is a sign of a disordered heart.  Our priorities are in the wrong place.  Following Jesus cannot be done at a sprint.  If we want to follow someone, we can’t go faster than the one that is leading.  Jesus was often busy, but never hurried.  The question we need to ask ourselves is, how can we submit our lives to God, producing fruits of the Spirit, when we are too busy or rushing through it by living according to works of the flesh?