Love Is Patient

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Welcome And The Myth Of More Time

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, thanks. My name's Cameron. I'm one of the pastors here at Cross Point. It's good to be here with you guys this morning. This beautiful. I'm glad you guys are getting a taste of the Pacific Northwest weather outside that uh it makes my heart so happy to see and experience. Um so we're gonna start uh with a little history lesson. Not a lesson, but a quote from a guy who lived about a hundred years ago. Uh he was talking in 1930. He was an uh economist named John Maynard Keynes, and he believed that within a century, so right, 2030, so getting pretty close, thanks to the growth of wealth and the advance of technology, no one would have to work more than 15 hours a week. And what our biggest problem in life would be what do we do with all of our leisure time, right? Now, uh it's almost 2030. I have a feeling that's not gonna happen in the next four years. Uh, but he was not alone in believing this. Uh he there are a lot of people around him at the time, and kind of throughout history since then, people always believe like once we get the next innovation, the next thing that will make us more efficient, it will free us up to have so much more time. Um and in some ways he's right. Because we can do things way more efficiently than we could ever do a hundred years ago. Um, but what happens is we take that extra efficiency and time uh and we just try to shove more into it, right? This happened when things like the washing machine and vacuum cleaners were invented. Uh instead of freeing people up to have more time, our standard of cleanliness just rose. It's like now you should be able to wash your clothes every time after you wear them. Like people didn't used to do that. But now it's just an expectation. Right? Think about email. It is so much more efficient to write an email than to write a letter. And yet, the invention of email I think has made all of our lives infinitely worse than when we were just using pen and paper, right? Because you just get more, and so it just allows you to do more things. Uh look at AI right now. People are using AI to make their life more streamlined and efficient in their work and all of this. And yet, what I see for the most part uh is people aren't using it to create more time for themselves. They're using it to just get more stuff done. And this is just like how our culture works, right? We are designed, we have designed our culture and our world for hurry and more and to accomplish things and to go faster and to push more in and to multitask and to hustle and just try to do as much as we can. And all that technology that's meant to help us speed through the hard parts of life usually just creates more stuff we have to do. And a lot of the times we don't even notice that this is happening, right? It just feels like the normal, natural way we're supposed to live, because this is how everyone around us is living all the time. And you might even like be like, what's the problem? Like, that's just the way the world works, that's the way the modern society is built. The problem, though, is that our inability to slow down and

Hurry Culture Kills Patience

SPEAKER_00 3:10

be present affects our ability to love. Because our passage today, here's what it is, really long. Um, love is patient, right? And when we are rushing on to the next thing, when we are shoving our lives so full of stuff that we're having to push and rush and multitask, uh, our world is anything but patient. Now, like Mac said, we're in a series in 1 Corinthians, uh, the love chapter, where we are looking at what love is, okay? Uh, and one of the things Mac and Sarah talked about the last couple weeks is that love is the goal of our spiritual life. It's the main thing. It is like what we are measured by. So, not how much you pray, not how much of the Bible you read, not how much you serve, not how much you come to church, although those are all good things. The way our spiritual life is measured is by how well we love like Jesus. So that was what Paul's talked about so far in this chapter. And this next big chunk of that we're gonna be in for the next several weeks is him filling out practically what does that love look like? What does this type of love that we are supposed to embody actually look like practically? Uh, because the type of love that we have really matters. Um, there is uh, because our culture uses the word love, and we use the word love to mean lots of things. And I would say our culture's vision of love is very different than godly love. Right? So we could say, hey, we're gonna be centered on love, and that could mean about a thousand different things, but we as the people who follow Jesus want to be centered on Jesus-looking love.

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Right?

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Our culture's version of love often doesn't look like godly love. I mean, one of the things our culture says is, hey, if you love me, you will accept everything I do and everything about me. Right? But Sarah talked about agape love, which is one of the Greek words for love, the self-giving love, the other-centered love, focused love. That type of love says, I want what's best for you, not just whatever you want right now. Right? And ultimately, God only knows what's best for us. But part of godly love that we show to other people means we try to champion what God wants in other people's lives in their lives as well. Of course, we can often get it wrong and assume we know what other people need and kind of try to fix them or control them, or maybe we know exactly what someone else needs, but we still might uh speed up the pace, right, in our uh desire for efficiency and just to like get them to the end goal when they're not really ready for change. And so this idea of how do we love people for what God wants for them, not just saying, hey, we'll accept you however you are. Um, there is a tension to navigate here, and it requires a patient, loving presence. So why is patience so important for love? I think there's a couple of reasons. Uh, one is the obvious one, being around impatient people is not nearly as pleasant as being around patient people, right? Choose two people uh in your life, maybe two bosses, two coworkers. Uh, there's generally you'd always choose the one who's a little more patient if everything else is equal. And so the tone of our of our words and what we do affects the way people receive our presence. But I think there's a deeper reason as well, and has to do with how we relate

Love Is The Spiritual Measure

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to people who aren't perfect, which is everyone. All right, here's our bottom line for today. Patience helps us see and love people for who they are, not who we think they should be. Right? A patient love helps us see people right where they are and be able to love them there, even if we have lots of opinions about how they could be doing better than they are right now, or they could be further along, or this rough edge could get sanded off. A patient love that looks like godly love uh meets people in reality. Right? Not just walking around trying to fix people or loving people with the same high expect like with our own high expectations on them, but meets people where they actually are. This type of love doesn't see people as obstacles to be overcome or a means to accomplish our own ends, but is infinitely valuable and created in God's image. And so, as we talk about patience, I want to kind of talk on two layers. Uh, most of this sermon will be very practical because when I say love is patient, most are just like, yeah, I kind of know what that means. So, like the hard part isn't knowing that we should be more patient. The hard part is how do we actually do that, right? And how do we become transformed into that? So, as we talk about a bunch of application stuff, uh, there's kind of two layers I want you to keep in mind. One is just how does my tone and like the way I speak and communicate and interact with people communicate a patient love or not? And then how do we relate to people when they aren't how we think they should be? When they don't measure up, when they have those flaws and those struggles, when they mess up and don't measure up to our standards. Right? And patience kind of helps us

Bottom Line On Patient Love

SPEAKER_00 8:20

in both of those layers. So, how do we grow in this? First of all, this is not something we can produce on our own. Okay, any of this list of stuff. We talked about this a lot uh when we talked about the fruit of the spirit a few years ago. That the fruit of the spirit, like if you think of like a fruit tree, fruit like grows out of it. You can't just like try really hard and make fruit appear, right? It's something that grows when all the conditions are right. So, in the same way, uh like us embodying a patient love towards people isn't something we can just like snap our fingers and make happen, or we can white knuckle and try really hard and make it happen. But we can cooperate with the transforming work of God in our life, right? Because God wants us to be patient and loving towards the people around us. And so He's wanting to form that and grow that inside of us, and we can either resist that work and go against it, or we can cooperate with that work that God is wanting to do. We can be more open to the fruit that the Spirit wants to grow in our lives of patience, or we can do things that close us off to that and cut off those branches or that resist that. And so what we're talking about today is not just like how do you try to be more patient and just try really hard, but how do we yield ourselves to God? How do we cooperate with the work God is already doing in our heart and in our soul? And to do that, I want to like frame this as starting from like an internal to the external. Okay, because I think it'd be really easy to talk about some patience's life hacks, right? Which is I know what I would probably want. Like just give me some quick tips and tricks of how to be more patient, which we'll get to some of those things. Um, but it ultimately starts from the inside out, right? Transformation isn't something that starts on the outside that we kind of force ourselves into, but real authentic transformation is best when it starts from the inside out and it flows out into every part of our life. And ultimately, what produces the lasting transformation is changing

Receive God’s Patient Love

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how we relate to God. And so that's our first uh thing here, first application point, is in order to grow in patience, you need to receive God's patient love for you. Now, many people don't see God as patient, right? They experience and think of God as demanding, as critical, as chronically frustrated with your lack of faith and obedience, and like, oh my gosh, if you just get it together already. Like, this is how a lot of people relate to God. And if you see and you experience God that way, you are gonna have a very hard time embodying patient love for other people, right? If that's what you're receiving from God, or that's what you assume God thinks about you. Now, this is not just like a self-helpy feel-good thing. I think sometimes when this maybe this is just me, that when I hear like God is patient and loving and present with you, I sometimes think like, yeah, that sounds too easy. There's no way that's true, right? Um, but so this isn't just some like new agey, fluffy, like, hey, just make you feel really good spirituality, but this is biblical, okay? So here's what uh we see in Psalm 103. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, right? This is uh you can go back to that last one. Um, like this is God in the Old Testament. Sometimes I think people like differentiate between like Old Testament and New Testament. Like, well, Jesus seems patient. I don't know about God the Father, right? This is the Lord, though, is compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, uh, not just like flying off the handle anytime you screw up, but compassionate and gracious and abounding in love. If you think of the story of Adam and Eve, uh Mark Harris from our district was here a few weeks ago and talked about Adam and Eve sinning. And one of the things is I was thinking about patience is just how patient God was with them. Right? He walks and he comes to them. He gives them a chance to like, uh, he calls out to them and gives them a chance to like show themselves. He he works with them after they've sinned, he makes clothes for them in their shame, he loves them and helps them find a new home, right? Uh God is so patient with them, even when they screwed up the most perfect thing in the entire world, right? God is patient with someone like Moses, who when God comes to Moses, he says, Hey Moses, I got something I need you to do. And Moses is like, Yeah, I can't do that, right? And God doesn't just go, all right, next, like let's go to the next one, right? He works with Moses and he helps Moses. And even though Moses didn't need someone with him, he gives Moses someone with him who can help him through this thing. God is patient with him. Uh, you look at someone like Paul in the New Testament. So if you remember from the book of Acts, he was going around, he was persecuting the church, he was like literally killing followers of Jesus. And then Paul says this in 1 Timothy. He says, But for that very reason I was shown mercy, so that in me, the worst of sinners, that's how Paul he's the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. So even Paul, who's literally going around like killing people, uh, Jesus is patient with him. Uh in 2 Peter 3:9, when Peter he's talking about why hasn't Jesus come back yet? He says this the Lord is not slow in keeping his promises. Right? So I thought he promised he'd come back. As some understand slowness, instead, he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. Right, which, by the way, feels so different from how I hear most Christians talk about our sinful world. It's like, I gotta burn it up and Jesus better come back and take care of these people. It's like actually, God's posture towards all the people you hate and you think are ruining the world is patient love, hoping that they will come to repentance, right? Uh, you look at the life of Jesus and it's characterized by patience, right? You look at any of the interactions with his disciples, right? Uh, who just asked stupid questions all the time, completely missed the point, fought over stupid things. Jesus is patient with them. He doesn't say, like, all right, Peter, three strikes, you're out of here. We need to find a new disciple here, right? He is patient and works with them and teaches them and challenges them and corrects them. But he stays with them. You look at Jesus with the woman at the well, uh, who he's asking her lots of uh pointed questions and kind of getting at what's happening in her soul, and she's like deflecting and and and talking about all these other things. Jesus doesn't just be like, all right, whatever, this woman doesn't want to talk to me and just get up and leave. He is patient as he dialogues with her, even when she's avoiding what he wants to talk about. You look at Jesus with the religious leaders, uh, and while, you know, we see Jesus getting frustrated with them and correcting them and giving them hard teaching. You also notice how many meals he has with them. Right? He spends a lot of time with these people. He dialogues with them, even when he probably knows dialogue isn't going to be very fruitful. Uh, he talks to them, and he does still speak hard truth and challenge people, yet he's characterized by patience. And so I think when we look at the life of Jesus, we see patience is not the same as just being a pushover, right, and letting people walk all over you. Uh, you can be patient and speak hard truth. All right, so when I talk about receiving God's love, like this kind of love that's embodied in Jesus that we see in the Old Testament and the New Testament, I don't mean you need to understand in your head that God is a patient God, right? Like I convinced you, now you believe this, but that you actually experience God in your heart and your soul this way. Right? Because there's a big difference between knowing in your head God is patient and actually in your time that you come to God in prayer, that you experience Him as patient and loving and present with you. Remember, our bottom line is patience helps us see and love people for who they are, not who we think they should be. Because that's what God does to us. Right? That is the type of love he has for us. He sees such a better way of life for each and every one of us than we ever take hold of, and yet he meets us in reality. Whether or not we're willing to change, he still meets us there with love, knowing that it is his love that ultimately produces that change. So if you're not receiving God's patient love, um, like if that's not, if you're like, that's not how I see God at all, full permission, stop right here, you don't have to listen the whole rest of the time. This is what you need to focus on this week is going to God and receiving his patient love for you. Because if you aren't doing that, you're not gonna be able

Self-Talk And Hidden Drivers

SPEAKER_00 17:20

to extend it to other people. All right, next kind of layer out from receiving that from God is to pay attention to how you talk to yourself. I noticed I'm most impatient with others when I'm also impatient with myself. And I'm like, come on, Cameron, get it together. Oh, I'm so frustrated with myself, or those kinds of things that leaks out to other people, right? Um, and again, this is not like a self-helpy, like, so be really kind to yourself, right? Uh like doing jumping, I don't know why I thought of Richard Simmons just doing jumping jacks right now. Um saved you from having to experience that, but um so this is not like a self-helpy way that I'm talking about. I'm like, what if we talk to ourselves the same way God talked to us? With that same kind of love and that same kind of patience and grace extended. Like, what if instead of me having to beat myself up and God being kind to me, I can stand with God and look at the mess of my life and be like, yeah, it's kind of a mess, but yeah, I love him, right? Like, what if we had that kind of perspective? And I know when I can do that, when I can see my life through God's eyes, um, it is so much easier to extend that same kind of love and grace and patience to other people. Right? When I can look at my own faults and have patience with them because I'm ultimately rooted in God's love, not trying to perform or achieve anything, uh, then other people's faults all of a sudden are a whole lot less annoying as well, right? Because I have patience for them. So pay attention to how you talk to yourself. Deal with what's underneath your impatience. We all live into sinful patterns for different reasons, but there is usually a reason that those kinds of things come out and leak out of our soul. Uh we can't just like white knuckle our way into a new way of relating with people if we don't deal with the sin and the stuff that's happening in our heart and our soul. Uh, if you've been through like a leadership intensive or a discipleship group, this is the idea of kairos, these kairos moments that are moments of invitation where we realize like I'm living and believing outside of God's kingdom, and there's an invitation into something new. So uh one, as I was have been thinking about patience for the last few weeks, uh, no surprise my children came to mind because they would constantly trigger moments of impatience that you know, I think of myself as a patient person until I started thinking about how patient am I actually. I'm like, oh, there's actually a lot of impatience there, right? Um, and so one of the things I also noticed is as I talk to people, everyone who has kids, most people who have kids, maybe if you are not impatient with your kids, please teach a little like seminar after the service day. I'd love to hear your how you don't uh struggle with that. Most people who have children do. Uh, but what I've noticed is underneath that can be a lot of different reasons. Right? So some people are afraid that like my kids aren't gonna turn out well if I don't push them and and fix them and make them who they need to be. So there's like a lot of fear that's underneath that impatience. Like if I don't fix this, there's gonna be problems and it'll all be my fault. Some people have a lot of shame around feeling like a really bad parent. And so uh that impatience, what's underneath that is like, oh my gosh, my kid is doing something so embarrassing right now, and everyone's gonna look to me and be like, Really? You let your kid do that? And so there's like this impatience and frustration and need to control and change your kid in order to manage other people's expectations. Right? For me, what's underneath my impatience with my kids is often my own selfishness, right? Because I want them to be easier to live with so I can do more of the things I want to do, right? And so if I'm honest, like I'm like, oh my gosh, can you just clean up your stuff already? Not because like I want what's best for them, but because I want them to go to sleep so I can like watch TV or do what I want to do, right? And so that's like often what's underneath my own impatience. So for everyone, it's different, but there's usually a reason, maybe you're frustrated with a coworker, there's something there uh in your soul that you need to tend to. Because until you deal with that and hear what God wants to say to you in that, you're gonna always be struggling with that, right? But Jesus wants to set you free from that and help you live into something different. Now, of course, you still need to address issues. Again, that doesn't mean you're just a doormat, like kind of push over, let everyone do whatever they want. But when I tell my kids that they need to start cleaning up, if I've dealt with what's underneath my impatience, I'm a much more loving, patient person, even if they are the same frustrating person that they were in the other situation, right? But my posture is very different, and I will I'm able to embody a different kind of love for them. And so we deal when we deal with our own junk. Instead of pivoting out of something unhealthy, we are able to more uh clearly embody

Loosen Judgments And Ask God

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Jesus' love. All right, next is uh for growing in patience is to hold your judgments about other people more loosely, right? We all to one degree or another walk around and probably have opinions about the people, either that we see, our coworkers, our family members, whoever it might be. And what I've noticed, again for me, is how I treat others starts with how I see them, how I think about them in my head, how I talk about them, how I judge them, and that all affects how present I'm able to be with them, and how loving and patient. So check out what Paul says in 2 Timothy 4 2. Preach the word, be prepared in season and out of season. So he's talking to Timothy, who's a young pastor. He's saying, correct, rebuke, encourage, like do all these things to help people grow with great patience and careful instruction. So even in our judgments and our corrections and our challenging people and helping people like avoid sin and grow out of their sin, we should be characterized by patience. And the way I can have more patience with people is if I hold all those gut reactions, those opinions, those thoughts, instead of like holding on to them and assuming like this is the right and this is true, and I'm gonna like try to fix it now, is to hold all those things just a little more loosely. And instead of doing something with them first, I bring them to God and say, God, this is what I'm seeing. Like, help me understand what's going on, or help me see maybe how do you see this person that is just driving me crazy? Or, or God, what do you want to say to this? And sometimes what I've noticed is uh God will change my perspective. He'll help me maybe notice something about someone that I hadn't noticed before. Uh sometimes though, he's like, Yeah, that's messed up. Um, yeah, maybe sometimes it means uh like when I hold it up to God and say, God, what do you want me to do with this? Sometimes it means, hey, come go and have a conversation with someone. Sometimes it means wait until it comes up. Like God's like, no, this is true. This is good to say, but wait until the moment that I make it clear that I want you to step into this. Um and sometimes uh it's just wait, and I realize, like, wow, I was wrong, and I'm really glad I didn't push my own agenda in this person's life because it wouldn't have gone well. Right? Anytime I step in and try to push my own agenda, instead of being submitted to God's agenda, things don't go well. Right? We need to submit those things to God and ask him to shape them and guide them. Because everyone uh changes at a different pace, and we all have things that uh we struggle with and we're more open or not open to change, and we cannot force change down anyone's throat. Um, and so we need to be open to the Spirit and how the Spirit is already working in someone's life. Here's what uh Paul says in Colossians 3 Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. Part of patient love means bearing other people's sharp edges and the difficult parts of them to live with. Um, and and loving them and being present to them even through

Empathy And Building Margin

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the hard things. All right, next for growing in patience, this is super helpful for me, is put yourself in someone else's shoes. Often impatience comes when we're self-focused, when I'm just thinking about what I want, what I need, what I'm trying to make happen in the world, right? And and usually when I'm fixated on that, then I don't care as much about what the tone of my interaction is with other people, right? And it's easy just to steamroll people or kind of not pay attention to that. Um, but when we can put ourselves in someone else's shoes, we see like, oh no, that does really matter. Like I'm at the really fun stage of parenting where I can remember what it was like being the age of my kids. And then sometimes I say things, and as I'm saying it, I'm like, this is exactly what my dad said to me. And it's this really like almost like out of body and dis you know, both I have more empathy for him, and I'm like, oh no, what have I become, right? Like all these things all at once. Um, but in some ways it's helpful to be like, oh, I remember what it was like being a kid, and my parents were trying to rush me, and I felt like it I was never fast enough or good enough, right? And how that like annoyance and irritation, how that affected me. Like to me, when I'm frustrated with my kids, it doesn't feel like that big of a deal. I'm like, well, maybe they shouldn't be so slow if they don't want me to get frustrated with them, right? Um, but when I think of what it's like being on the other side of that, it soften the way I talk to them. All right, give yourself the margin to have patience. This is kind of moving more out into the world around us outside of just our internal life. I think practically too much of our impatience stems from the hurry that exists in our society and the fact that we try to fit way too much into our lives. And the problem maybe is even that you're not even that impatient of a person. You might be a very patient person, but if you have structured your life so it's so full, and you can't take like a five-minute uh slowdown or change of plans or something before it sets you off, like your life is just too full to really have patience for people. You know, I think of uh driving, right? As a spot a lot of people's impatience comes up. Um when I am running late and I'm driving to like to come into the church, uh, it is r and I get behind a slow person, it is really tempting to blame my lateness on them, right? But really the problem is like, oh no, I have uh structured my life so that I'm pushing it to the last minute, and the only way I could get here on time is if everything went perfectly, right? And maybe that's a me problem, not a them problem. Although they could still drive a little faster, but you know, still. Um I think of getting my girls ready for school in the morning. Uh, you know, this is uh this is where a constant test of patience comes in. I remember when we first started doing school stuff, um, I would think like, hey, oh, it's two minutes before we have to walk out the door. This seems like a very reasonable amount of time to put your shoes on, right? And and for like, I don't know, months, I'd be like, all right, time to put your shoes on. And somehow we'd always be running late, and I'd be pushing it, I'd be like, frustrated, like, what is going on? Why do you need to change your outfit right now? We're getting our shoes on to walk out the door. Like, I have to go to the bathroom. Oh, I don't know where my socks are. Where are my shoes? I'm not, I think it might be in the van, right? All these reasons why then we're running super late, and I'm getting frustrated and impatient. And eventually, day after day of saying, This should only take you two minutes, I don't know what's going on. I realized, like, you know what? Maybe it doesn't take two minutes to put your shoes on if you're my kids. Maybe they need like 10 or 15 minutes. And I started giving them like a 10-minute warning, like, all right, time to put your shoes on 10 minutes before we have to go. And almost all of our frustration in the morning went away, right? Because it was like now there was the margin that even if at the last minute someone had to run upstairs and find their snow pants, like we had the margin that we can still get out the door on time. If you structure your life with no margin, you are just like doing this whole patience thing on hard mode, right? Because you are constantly behind, constantly like if anything slows you down, if anything doesn't go quite as planned, now you have to push in order to stay on schedule or to do it all. Good for you if you can do it. I don't think it's worth it though, personally. Having that little extra margin allows me, I know, to be a more loving uh parent with my kids, right? And to me, that's worth whatever the extra few minutes I have to give them in the morning. So if you're struggling with patience, uh it might not be a you problem. Maybe it's your schedule, which is still kind of a you problem because you created your schedule, but you know what I mean. Like maybe you're not struggling with patience as much as you think you are. Maybe you are just trying to fit way too much and you're trying to do

Break The Cycle And Apologise

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all these things, so it's almost impossible to live with patient love towards the people around you. All right, next, uh a lot of times we screw this up and we mess up and we get impatient. As I was talking to people over the last few weeks, I was like, hey, as people were sharing stories and stuff, it's like, hey, tell me, like, how did you like stop that cycle of being really impatient? And without a doubt, like everyone's like, oh, I took a break, right? Sometimes, if we are caught up in that impatience, we need to take a break, take a step back. Um, when you're really frustrated, that can be helpful to get out of the situation. You can't always do it, but pray, gain some perspective, um, cool off so you can enter back in in a more loving way. Or I even think of again, my children getting ready in the morning. If I find myself getting really frustrated with them and pushing them, it's probably better for me to take 30 seconds to cool off and then come back rather than to use that 30 seconds just to double down and keep going, right? Because I'll be in a much more loving way. And they are much more responsive too when I'm more loving. Um, so weird. Um, and then if you do blow it, apologize if you've been short and rude, right? Don't double down, you don't have to defend yourself, just say sorry, because that does hurt the people around us when

Practices To Train Patience

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we're rushy and impatient. Um, and so we need to make that right, because that's what love would do. All right, and lastly, here, kind of as we wrap up, uh, I want to encourage you to find ways to flex your patient's muscle. And here's what I mean by that because our culture is so much the opposite of patience, um, I think we need to do a lot of work to grow into patience, like to flex those muscles. Just like if you have a desk job, you have to work extra hard to get outside and to get some exercise versus if you do work outside. Um, in the same way, because our culture is so uh not patient, I think we need we can do some stuff to help us grow into patience. Um, and some of these are gonna be really silly, and I feel like I'm gonna get made fun of for. But these have been helpful for me, ways to flex my patient, patience muscle to grow into patience. Again, not as like that patience is the be-all end-all, but in order to help be more loving. When we offer these up and say, God, I'm gonna let you form me through the normal, like mundane, everyday parts of life. Doesn't change overnight, but God does form us and work in us as we offer up more of our body and our habits and our mind and all of that to Him. So the first one is practice silence and contemplative prayer. You know, I have found that when I am praying and taking time to like stop and be quiet and still in God's presence, I uh it is easier to access that stillness in other parts of my life. Right? If I don't ever have time in stillness with God, it's really hard when things feel like they're revving up to slow down. But when this is a normal rhythm for me, I can access that and kind of slip into that mode and be more present with people. Uh second, find ways to slow yourself down. This this is the one I feel like we made fun of for. Sometimes when I'm behind someone slow on the bypass, they're going like, you know, it's like 55, they're going like 54. I will just drive at 54 if I don't have anywhere I need to be. And it is so difficult to drive behind someone driving slow when you know you could be going like uh, you know, one mile an hour or ten miles an hour faster, depending on how many police officers are in the room. Uh when you know you could be going a little faster, right? It's really hard to keep yourself slowing down, but it's like, I'm not, what am I gonna get there? A minute sooner? And that practice, that like six minutes of driving slower, helps me be more centered and calm and patient with the people around me. Uh, do something slower than you need to, whether it's driving, walking, like I take my daughter uh Rosalind to the store. Uh there you go. You know, you got like a 10-minute store trip turns into like 20 or 30 minutes, and you learn patience. On that note, have children, right? Uh, this will slow you down. If you need children, feel free to borrow mine. They will slow you down, I can guarantee it, and test your patience. I'm happy to serve you in that way if you need it. Uh leave your phone in your pocket when you wait for something. Right? Part of the reason why we can't ever slow down and be present is because we're constantly stimulating our senses. And so I will intentionally feel myself like reaching for my phone and be like, no, I'm waiting two minutes at the store. I think I can just stand here and wait. Right? And that feels silly, but it pays dividends in other parts of my life where I can then slow down and be present. Uh stop multitasking, right? This one hurts. I love to multitask. Just stop trying to shove too much into your life and be present in the moment. Wait to buy stuff, right? This is partly why we don't have prime, because I'm like, that impatience of like, oh, I need this now, I'm gonna get it, is not good for my soul, right? It is good to have to slow down and be more thoughtful about things. Um, engage in activities that force you to be patient, that flex this. Whether that's reading, whether that's engaging in art, whether it's watching a slow movie, whether it's going hunting or fishing or hiking. Yes, uh, you guys just heard me, you can justify going fishing and hiking as a spiritual practice to slow yourself down and to be patient and in the moment. And then lastly, uh, and this one might annoy some of you, and I'm sorry. I'm not that sorry, I'm a little sorry. Uh reframe struggles with patience as opportunities to practice patience. So, for example, when I'm uh getting my girls out the door in the morning, and uh it's sometimes like like doing some prompting and stuff can make things go faster, and sometimes it won't make it go faster at all. And so instead of spending those three minutes fuming while the person's running upstairs to find their snow pants, I can stop and be like, you know what, God, you are forming something good in me. I don't like it. It's a little annoying, it's a little frustrating, but God, you're doing something in me right now, right? When you're stuck in traffic, instead of being annoyed at everyone around you and how slow everything's going, that God, you are forming patience in me right now, if I let you. Um, and I have found that it totally reshapes my perspective. I mean, I'm still not totally, I'm still kind of annoyed and I'm still frustrated, but I'm at least like, at least God is going to work something out of this, right? But this goes with working with God's work in our life, not against it. Because if I start screaming and yelling, I am working against that formational work God wants to do in my soul. And if I stop and surrender and yield to it, I'm going with that work God wants to do in my soul through that frustrating experience. All right, as we wrap up here, I want to remind you the goal of all of this is love, not patience. Okay? Cultivating patience should help us be more loving, but patience is not the end goal. Love is. Patience should serve our ability to love people. Because just like Sarah talked about last week with all the different things, uh, like you can appear patient on the outside and calm and cool and collected and be judgmental and angry and bitter and unloving on the inside. And if that's like that's missing the entire point. The point of all of this is love, not just managing our behaviors and looking good on the outside and putting a fake smile on while we help people, right? The whole point is a real authentic love that starts from the inside out, starts from our soul, starts from our own experience with our patient, loving God that then overflows and goes

Action Steps And Next Group

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into every part of life. Um, so as we wrap up here, there's a few action steps. You can find all this online on our uh website. Some questions you can think through with a journal or while you're driving or praying this week. Um, and then for the practice is just pick one of the practice. Like I listed a bunch of stuff up above. Uh, just pick one of them and try it. Again, if you feel like you don't experience God as patient and loving, do that. Like, don't start with one of the other things, like, oh, I'll try this little life act. Like, that's where you need to start is experiencing God as your patient and loving Father who sees all the faults, sees even more faults in your life than you see, but still wants to meet you in the moment and be present with you wherever you are. So

Closing Prayer

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let me pray for us. Uh, or actually, before I pray, a couple reminders, or one reminder, I'm starting a group tomorrow night, going through what it practically means to follow Jesus. It'll be Monday nights kind of through the fall. If you're new to this faith thing, you want to take your faith seriously, maybe for the first time in a while, or just feeling really dry and unsure what to do, uh, go sign up, send me an email. I'd love to get you connected in that group. It should be a good time uh just seeing what it looks like to practice the way of Jesus together. So let me pray for us. God, thank you so much for your love and your grace. God, your patient love towards us. God, I just ask that even though we probably all find all these areas of our life that we're falling down and we're frustrated with and we're impatient with ourselves, God, I just ask that you would fill us up with your patient love for us. Uh, that we would actually experience that good news. That no matter how many chances we've had and failed, that no matter how many things we're still struggling with, that you have love and grace and compassion for us. God, help us to really believe that deep in our bones this week. Uh God, I also ask that you would give us the power and the courage and the strength to live into new rhythms when it comes to patience and love with the people around us, with strangers, with co workers, with family members. God, whoever it is that you put in our path, um, help us to embody that same patient love that you have for us. So we thank you for your love and your grace. And it's in your name we pray. Amen. All right, have a good week.