Getting stuff NOW is great. Waiting is a pain.
Patience is kind of a pain in the kiester. No one really likes to wait for their hopes and dreams to come true. And more to the point of yesterday's message, no one really likes to wait on other people. It's so much easier, so much more natural feeling, to get irritated by that one particular person's quirks and foibles and write them off as antagonistic or difficult or just simply not worth my time. Being patient with them generates a lot of hassle and pain we simply just don't feel we need.
But there's something important we're missing with that attitude: we're missing an opportunity to grow.
Learning to be patient with prickly people teaches you something about yourself. You already know what faults other people have, but what we often lack is self-awareness of our own stress fractures. The process of learning to be patient with the faults of other people is a revealing look in a none-too flattering mirror. It teaches you what your hot buttons are, what things are likely to set you off, no matter whether those things are petty or grand. And once you better learn what your own fault lines are, the better you will be at predicting their collapse. In other words, learn more about yourself and you'll be more patient with others.
Try it next time you feel yourself growing impatient with another. Ask yourself, "What, exactly, is going on inside me that I'm growing impatient with this person?" I'd wager that if you are serious enough about that question, you'll find something inside yourself that you don't much like. Something that God didn't plant there. Something that needs to be uprooted through confession. Something that He wants to take away from you, to forgive, and in it's place bring new life and joy.
Something that God's Holy Spirit will have revealed to you through the painful process of learning patience.
Proverbs 19:8, "He who gets wisdom loves his own soul; he who cherishes understanding prospers."
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