“Patience” the Wayfarer 1/2/14

“Patience”
1/2/14

“In your patience possess ye your souls.”

(Luke 21:19)

Patience is a virtue possessed by few, and practiced by still fewer.

This is one of the many “spirits”  that I address daily in prayer.

It is also one that I find to be most difficult to find and follow for myself, because, as a friend once warned me, when you pray for patience, God also gives things that will require that patience!

As we look at the world, with all the problems, all of the pain, all of the evil that exists, patience wears thin, and other “spirits” tend to attempt to replace it.

If we allow ourselves to succumb to those spirits, ones of impatience, anger, disappointment, delusion and dissatisfaction, we allow the possession of our very souls instead of maintaining that possession as we were asked by Jesus to do in the opening verse.

Rather than regurgitate the entire chapter, I once again, ask the reader to go there for yourself.

It is prophesy of a time to come, and guidance given in how to best prepare for that time, and how we are to endure that time.

It begins with the history of a poor widow, and what she gave, and its importance to God as opposed to the showy offerings of those who gave only for the recognition of the giving.

From there it continues with the warning of that time to come, that I feel we have entered, giving us explicit examples of what is to be expected by the few that truly “get it”.

It concludes, for the most part at the 36^th verse with the following:

“Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man”
(Luke 21:36)

The watching part is easy! In fact it is difficult not to watch the transformation that has taken place in our society and world.

It is easy to see the poor and needy among us whose desperation is so apparent.

It is also easy to see the lack of care and attention given them by those who have the ability, but whose desire and greed blind them to that need.

It is easy to stand by and watch as moral guidelines and the laws of God are blurred by that same greed, and the desires of a society devoted to being politically correct to the point of allowing the minority to force the majority to accept what was and is unacceptable to God himself.

Perversion pervades, and unfortunately will continue to do so.

I continue to pray for that patience, I continue to pray that others find that patience as well. I pray that that patience extend to the ability to not only endure those things that assault my very being, but for enough of that patience to overcome those things in all their guises.

I pray that that patience be given to those most in need of it, along with the wisdom to exercise it in the management and leadership of a people who long ago lost that patience, and its soul as well.

I pray for God’s own patience, with me for my own failures, and with those he chose to so bless for so long.

I pray for that patience to be recognized for what it is, not the acceptance of all the evil that exists, but the expectation and surety of the correction that must and will occur when God’s own patience is finally exhausted.

I pray continually for patience in all I do, all I say, and all those I have no choice but to love and interact with until imperfection is replaced with perfection and that need for patience no longer exists.

I remain, as ever, that selfsame imperfect sinner, saved by grace though faith in the One whose patience with me allowed my own salvation. I also remain far less patient than I could wish, an unworthy servant, and soldier, continually seeking the solace of that patience that can only be attained with sincere effort as I continue in the attempt of that service, for as long as I am allowed to continue to serve.

2 Timothy 1:12 King James Version (KJV)

¹² For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.

Amen and Amen
the Wayfarer