Success Through Patience
2 Peter 1:5-7
And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.
These are all great attributes and right in the very middle is "Patience". This is one quality that can only be acquired by persistence and endurance. It is a drill that you have to do over and over and over again!
Linda has taken some great bucks over the last 20 years. She's harvested more big bucks than most guys that have hunted 50 years. We have been in many camps where guys have said that they were tired to be outdone by a woman.
Why is she so successful? Because she is patient when it comes to hunting. She practices persistence and endurance. Year in and year out that is what makes her successful and it's the same in most everything for each of us in life.
The original Webster's dictionary offers this definition of patience: "the suffering of afflictions, pain, toil, calamity, provocation or other evil, with a calm, unruffled temper; endurance without murmuring or fretfulness, from a kind of heroic pride, or from a Christian submission to the divine will."
Reading this definition two things really jumped out at me... first, "endurance without murmuring". I can get so frustrated sitting in a construction zone or waiting for my family to get ready to go somewhere... counting the wasted minutes when I could have been doing something else (maybe even something useful)! Yet, what an opportunity for me to use the delay to work on my patience! I need to stop murmuring.
The second thing that really hit me was, "a Christian submission to the divine will.". WOW!!! I fail miserably at times with this. Read it again..."a Christian submission to the divine will." How many times are we placed in a difficult position, or forced to deal with an "impossible" situation or perhaps, an "impossible" person? These circumstances are always opportunities to grow in patience – or to learn to submit to God's providential will, and often, to minister in some special way.
Is your patience being tested today? Great! Remember, in 1 Cor. 13:4 Paul wrote that love is (first of all) patient. The Lord is training you toward godliness... and godliness is moving toward perfect love. With so much work to be done, He is really wanting to work patience into your character now. He wants to perfect your love, and with it to transform the world around you for His glory!
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