Patience

I actually started out preparing this talk with a whole different topic. Since your theme was Furiously Flourishing , the first thing that came to my mind was Queen Esther. How she fearlessly fought for her people in the midst of chaos and hatred. I love her so much in fact that I named one of our daughters after her, Hadassah, and we call her Haddie. She was only with us for a short time in my womb, and I loved her so much that I wanted to give her a strong, holy name. So Haddie it was. A few nights ago when I was beginning to prepare writing out what I was going to say the Lord spoke to me and said: ” I’m changing your topic. You’re going to talk about patience.”   ” What Lord? I was going to be done with the preparations tonight. Now I have to start all over. Now I have to wait a few more days before I feel like it’s complete. Don’t you see that I’ve worked so hard already?”    It was then I saw that this new topic was mostly for me, and partly for you ladies. If someone could take notes and email them to me that would be great.   We had a bit of a wrestling match in my office, which I call the office to make me feel more grown up. The fact is that my computer is in there, and a few thousand books , and a large dog kennel that our lab sleeps in at night. Really, it’s his bedroom because it smells of constant dog hair. A woman uses words to make herself feel more important.   Like leggings are yoga pants , even though I’ve only done yoga once by accident. I was in pain for weeks after that fall. I mean the yoga I did.   Leggings sound like a lazy word for pants, so we jazz it up.    When he first told me about the topic of patience I began getting flooded with memories and life events that I had to wait. I had to sit in the mud and wait for the rain to stop so the grass would grow. In fact my whole life has been about waiting, and asking him for the grace to wait with patience. His patience .   I was reminded of  1 Corinthians 13 where it says:  

13 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

2 If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

3-7 If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

I was immediately convicted in my daily walk with him that if I LOVE HIM, I WILL PRACTICE PATIENCE. Patience is a give and take for a Mother of three children under the age of 7. Most days I pull my hair out so often that I start looking at fashionable wigs on Amazon. Heck, if I got one I wouldn’t have to wash my hair that often. 

So BECAUSE he’s asked us to keep going until the end, that means that he’s EQUIPPED us to do what he has asked of us. Guess what, life without Him helping us isn’t a life at all. 

The word Patience actually comes from two words:

PASSION AND LONG

That means we can have passion for his promises WHILE we wait, even if it’s a LONG time.

My life has pretty much been made up of waiting a long time to see his promises come to fruition.

I grew up in a trailer with five siblings while my parents saved up money to build their house. In the waiting there was deep embarrassment and shame for where I lived. I didn’t want them to see that I shared a bed with my sisters, all three of them .

That waiting lasted ten years, and in that season I learned key things that made me the woman I am today.

– Life isn’t all about me.

– You share , no matter what it is , you share with people you love.

– We developed a love for the outdoors

– Love is PATIENT

When my Dad finally built the house that was twenty times bigger than the single wide trailer, we got to rejoice as a family! All the waiting and patience paid off. We had to wait because there was many lessons to learn in the process. Without that season of my life I would have missed out on valuable experiences that needed to take place as a part of my calling. He had to humble my spirit, a lot.

When my husband and I first got married at age 19 , we were so broke. We lived in a tiny house in the hood, and both worked several jobs to stay a float. We had had so many prophetic words that we would be financially successful, and that Matt would own his own business one day. It took years of patience, and falling and getting back up to get to the place where his business is self sustaining.

In the nine years that we have been married we have moved seven times. Seven. Each move got us closer to the dream of owning our own home, but in all the waiting we had to develop a deep level of patience.

I’m gonna tell you guys a story.. stories are my favorite.

Several years ago a mentor of mine came up to me at church and told me that she was praying for me that week, and she saw a vision of a dark wooden staircase in an older farm house. She knew that the staircase was that of a home that we would purchase, our dream house.

Years passed and we ended up moving into a home built in 1820 , that had a dark staircase. Our plan was to lease to own for a year, buy it and remodel the whole thing. It was a cute little house on a hill with a river that ran through the property. An old Mill still stood there, and we had plans to make it into a wedding venue. I had my mentor over to show her the house, and especially the stair case.

You see, I had convinced myself that THIS WAS THE HOUSE IN THE VISION! I had to have it right then, after all I had waited to long for a place to call HOME. She walked up to the staircase and told me that it wasn’t the one in her vision.

Being impatient once again I told myself that we only see and prophecy in part, she could be wrong. After all how we got that house HAD to have been Jesus. They chose us to lease it, instead of the ten others that were offering more money for it.

So, we settled in and after six months things in that house started to go all wrong. At the six month mark we had to move out for several reasons, one being my mental health. I landed myself in the hospital with intense panic attacks, and I was deathly underweight.

I know now that that season COULD have been avoided if we had just been PATIENT for God to bring about the right house at the right time. Instead I jumped the gun like I used to do, and convinced myself that THIS HOUSE was his will.

Flash forward two years and two houses later, we are now in our dream house. The same house that my friend saw in her vision, we are living his promises over our lives.

I cannot say that I got here being patient, but I can say that I got here LEARNING to lean on Him and Him only for his patience to overtake my stubborn and risky spirit.

I learned that PATIENCE is a necessary part of our lives IF we want to follow God.