Bible Study Week 5: Patience!

Hello All! Have you been patiently waiting? Between sickness in my home and sickness all around, we took a break from our Bible Study. BUT...we're back!

I hope you enjoy this week's lesson. It means a lot to me and (unfortunately!) I have to think of this often when when I get impatient. :)

Week 5

Patience

            Patience…what
can we say about patience? We all want it. We all pray for it. And usually, God
makes us wait for it. That is annoying, isn’t it!? We want it. We need it. And
we are doing our best to patiently wait for our spiritual endowment of other
worldly patience, so that we might have the patience of Mother Teresa and
Michelle Dugger all rolled into one.  And
so many times we think that God is not hearing us or he is ignoring us or has
better things to do, but did you ever stop to think that the teaching in the
waiting?

When I first started working at a
bank in Springfield, I had only been married about a year and half, and as so
many young married women, I had struggles adapting to the addition of a mother
in law to my life. I am an independent women and I can go it all myself.

One day, I was training in a new area
and for whatever reason, I started to vent to this lady who was training me
about some of the stresses I was having in that situation. When I was done, she
proceeded to tell me that she had this perfect story for me that someone had
emailed her.

This is what she sent me:

Long ago, there was a young woman who
had recently married and in her culture, once married, the mother in law, if
she was widowed, would come to live with the oldest son and his wife.

Now the young women had been well
trained by her mother to run a household, but it was not the way that the
mother in law had done things for the many years , so this lead to many arguments  between the two.

Finally, the daughter in law could no
longer take it and went to a local medicine woman and asked for something to
help her with her problem. The medicine women gave the girl a special tea that
when made in small quantities, would gradually weaken the mother in law until
she was dead. But, the medicine woman warned the girl to make sure that she provided
her mother in law with extra attention and kindness until she passed so that no
one would suspect her of foul play.

So starting that day, the girl would
have afternoon tea with her mother in law, each having their own tea which the
girl prepared. And each day, the girl would lavish more and more attention on
her mother in law. She would take her advice. She would accept her criticism.
She would do things specifically to make her mother in law happy.

Months past, and the mother in law
seemed as healthy and alive as ever and the daughter in law wondered if she was
doing something wrong, so she went back to visit the medicine woman. After
explaining to the medicine woman that she didn’t see any changes in her mother
in law, the medicine women explained once again that the tea was slow acting
and the girl needed continue what she was doing. So she returned home and
continued with the ritual of afternoon tea and her treatment of her mother in
law.

This continued for many years and
each day, as the girl began to spend more time with her mother in law, slowly
the feelings of resentment and hurt began to fall away. Until one day, her mother
in law fell ill and as the girl was by her bedside, she realized that she truly
loved her mother in law and feared that she truly had killed her.

The girl rushed to the medicine woman
and fell sobbing at her feet, begging for the antidote to heal her mother in
law.

It was then that the medicine woman told
the girl the truth. The tea she had been giving the girl all these years was
not poisonous. Rather it was just a plain, herbal tea that had no real
benefits, good or bad.

The girl was shocked and didn’t
understand why the woman had lied to her all these years. The woman told her
that the answer was very simple. Back when the girl was younger, she wanted things
to be perfect instantly and in her young nature wasn’t willing to be patient
and wait as her relationship with her mother in law developed. Instead, the
medicine woman had given the girl a chance to be patient and the girl now
benefited from a loving relationship with her mother in law.

The moral of the story?

Good things don’t come instantly.

 Good things come to those who not only
patiently wait, but choose to wait with a good attitude.

And sadly enough, patience, although
it can be, is rarely a spiritual endowment. It is a choice.

Now of course, the girl in the story
was tricked into having a good attitude, but it didn’t change the outcome. She
was blessed with the love of a person whose relationship she had wanted to
abandon from the very beginning.

What about us?

How many things have we abandoned
because the talent didn’t come instant? Or the relationship was too hard, so we
cut ties?

There are so many situations that
require more patience than we can seemingly muster in one day. But try this. Make
a chose to choose one situation in your life and be like the girl in the story.
Be kind beyond reproach and despite what the person might say or be positive
about a situation no matter what twists and turns that situation might take.
Make the choice and see how God will honor your patience.

 

Monday Morning Minute-March 21, 2011

Sickness has plagued my house, but ALAS! Meds have been taken and there is a light at the end of this tunnel! J

For those of you who look forward to our Monday Morning Minutes, I offer my sincere apologies for letting you down last week. I hope this week makes up for it!

Over the previous week, we have been meditating on scriptures about patience and on day 3 we came to a rather lengthy passage. It said:

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.

Colossians 1:9-12

We know that we are called to spend daily time in the word and in prayer, but according to this passage in Colossians, those times of prayer should not just about ourselves.

Paul, the writer of this letter, writes that he and his friend Timothy have prayed CONTINUALLY and then goes on to list the eight things that they have prayed for. That the people of Colosse will:

1)      1) Be filled with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding

2)      2) Be living a worthy life

3)      3) Be pleasing him in everyway

4)      4) Be bearing fruit in good works

5)      5) Be growing in knowledge

6)      6) Be strengthened  with all power

7)      7) Have endurance with patience

8)      8) Be joyful in giving thanks

That is a long list!! And what disservice I am doing to my friends and family and my God when I choose to not lift up in my daily prayers.

And I don’t mean that to be a heaping pile of guilt, but rather, for me, it has been an eye-opener of all the things we have to offer in friendship-more than maybe we even thought we had-just because we choose to remember our friends in prayer.

So what now? I know we are all busy and in the course of our daily lives, we tell people “I’ll pray for you” and then forget until the next time we see them.

Next time that happens…the next time someone either specifically asks for prayer or the Holy Spirit drops a name in to your heart, try this: Put that person’s name at the place you see the most. If you work on a computer, put a sticky note on the side of your monitor. Tied to your Blackberry? Set an alarm with their name to go off a few times a day. Addicted to your facebook? Change your profile picture to a picture of the two of you or to a picture that always reminds you of that person.

Whatever it is…DO IT! And see the difference, not only that it makes in the lives of others, but in your life as well.

(Look for this week's Bible Study notes and scriptures coming soon!)

Real Women Bible Study-Week4-Peace Please!!

Good Morning All!

I hope this weekend has allowed you a little R & R and that this week ahead doesn't look too frightening!

For the last two weeks, we have been pondering scriptures on joy and peace. And one of the greatest stealers of both, I think, is discontentment. Having that feeling that you want more or deserve more or that envious feeling that someone has what you want or deserve.

So, tonight, we will finish watching a great sermon by Joyce Meyer called "Consistently Content."

Last week, she began Pt 1 with a line that I absolutely love. She said: There are millions of people in the world who have what you say you want and they are still not happy either.

Now, that's not to say that we should not strive for more in our life or strive to achieve things, but backing that need for more should be the certainly that God is behind your en devours or else the en devour will be fruitless anyway and will leave us with that sense of discontentment.

The link for Part 2 of "Consistently Content" is on Week 3's post (the second link.) Please watch it if you can't join us tonight at 6:45-8:00 at my house.

And how appropriate that our next fruit of the spirit is: long suffering or patience! Choosing to be content in our lives and to find peace and joy in our daily walk will sometimes take GREAT patience!

Enjoy this week and look for your week of scriptures on PATIENCE tomorrow.

God Bless.