Episode #390 Patience Happens When You Trust God With Time – Fruit That Grows in Freedom

Hey, friend. Do you ever struggle with waiting? Or said a different way, do you ever struggle with patience? Today we're talking about patience as a fruit of God's Spirit, not as something that we have to conjure up on our own, but something that God flourishes in us by His Holy Spirit as we live in daily life with Him. And there's a role that we play as we participate with God in the fruitfulness that He's bringing into our lives.

Scripture exhorts us to walk with God. To keep in step with His Spirit. To align how we live, what we believe about God, what actions we take with the truth of who He is, living according to who we are as new creations instead of according to our old sinful nature.

But where we can sometimes get turned around is we can think about the fruit of God's Spirit as something we need to put on ourselves to show ourselves to be Christians, instead of something that's a natural byproduct because of the way that we live in relationship with God. And so we're revisiting some of the fruit of the Spirit to see what God offers us to receive in greater measure from Him, to see what God offers to flourish within us.

And I have found that oftentimes a struggle with patience isn't actually about a struggle with waiting. It's a struggle with fear. The type of patience that is a fruit of God's Spirit is trusting God's timing and His activity, and that includes us enduring difficulty because we trust God. And this is where the struggle turns to fear, right? Because oftentimes in seasons of waiting, we can struggle with fear about if God's actually gonna show up for us. We can struggle trusting if going through the difficulty is actually going to be worth it. We can struggle trusting if God will prove faithful to His word to us.

And sometimes that fear is that the things that we're hoping for aren't gonna look like what we want them to. But that again turns us back to trust, because even in the patience, I'm trusting the outcome to the Lord. I'm not holding on so tightly to the thing I want to happen. I'm holding on so tightly to the One I trust. To the God who knows me and loves me, and I'm entrusting to Him the things that I'm waiting for, believing that He knows what's best for me, and believing that I can rely on Him even when circumstances or the timing don't look like I want them to.

God's patience grows in us when we trust His timing more than our own. And I know that in the midst of long waiting seasons, that can feel excruciatingly painful. But the good news is I'm not the only one who knows that, God knows that, too. And you can come to Him when you are struggling to wait, when you're struggling against fear, and you can ask Him to help grow within you that trust that produces patience.

I wanna read for you Psalm 27:14. It says, "Wait for the Lord. Be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord."

Friend, if you are in a difficult waiting season, I wanna encourage your heart. Your trust is well-placed in the Lord. Take heart. Be strong in your waiting for Him. Continue to talk with God about the ways that can be difficult for you. And reject any temptation to put on an act of patience. But instead, ask God by His supernatural power, by His presence and His Spirit at work in you, to give you a patience beyond what you can muster on your own.

And so as always, I wanna close out today's episode with a question that you can now take to God to continue this conversation with Him and see what more He would share with you:

God, in this area of waiting where I can struggle to be patient, what am I afraid will happen if you don't act according to my timeline? And what more do you want to tell me about it?

Have a good talk.

And if you've been encouraged by this content, please share it with a friend and help them grow in their conversational relationship with God too!

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