Patience Is a Virtue

*Warning -> This is a REALLY LONG post, but it's also REALLY good. So grab a cup of coffee and sit back and enjoy the challenge. :-) 

"Patience is a virtue, learn it while you can..." Yeah, yeah. We've all heard this before, but when you are at the end of your rope. What do you do? Let me be a bit transparent with you. I have Fibromyalgia‎. You may have already known this. You may have not.

Unfortunately, I have heard this term thrown around a lot. Some people with excruciating pain have been so labeled, as well as others with health problems that doctors didn’t know how to diagnose.

So how does it play out in my life? Glad you asked.  This is the best way for me to explain it. When it’s bad, it feels like someone took a bat to my whole body. I'm extremely sore ALL OVER. It’s also a nerve disease so it makes me very short- tempered.

Crying and nagging really irritate it. When I’m having a “fibro day” little things annoy me and it’s hard for me to handle life. Usually I will get super-upset which throws my health into a loop. I have neck problems as well and many times this messes with my neck. I can be in bed for a week, just healing from my bad day. Having children has made it worse because my nerves can get shot after a hard day with the kids.

It used to play out by me being annoyed which led to me getting angry, and, eventually, getting into it with my husband. After our disagreement, I would get super-sick and would end up in bed for a few days. Hubby used to tease me (afterwards, of course) that I couldn’t “fight” with him because I would get sick.

So patience is something I REALLY struggle with. 
It’s hard to be patient when your nerves are shot. 
It’s hard to be patient when you just don’t feel good. 
It’s hard to be patient when your kids are screaming and you are carrying a just-folded basket of laundry up the stairs and it falls down the stairs and totally gets messed up. Yep, that really happened to me. 
It’s hard to be patient when you have a 2-year old. PERIOD. 
It’s hard to be patient when you aren’t getting much sleep.

So, let me tell you about last Tuesday. It started with me picking up my violin that had been in the shop since February. It was finally fixed and I was happy to have it home.  I opened my trunk and it flew out and fell on the ground. I tried to save it and, in doing so, banged and cut my leg on the cement (I really don’t even know how that happened). While I’m trying to recover, my cell phone went flying and landed, YEP, in a puddle.  When lunch time came I opened the fridge and out came the blueberries. The package opened and they went flying in 10 different directions.  I hurried to clean them up as we were to have missionaries stay at our house and they were due to arrive in about 30 minutes. 

The day went on with all different "fun" events, including police surrounding an area gas station and me banging my tooth with a coffee cup.  Oh, and the worst, my son drops T's mommy-milk bottle on the ground and I lost most of the milk. (Sometimes it's ok to cry over spilled milk, especially that kind.) 

Around 3:30 PM, I left to get some iced coffee at Dunkin Donuts. I had to be at a church activity in about 30 minutes.  Just enough time to grab coffee, pick up a teen and be at the church. I pulled into the DD drive-thru and there were 10 cars. Not even joking. I have NEVER seen that many people there, in the middle of the afternoon. Yeah, maybe 2 or 3 but not 10. It was just one of those days. Patience…Yeah, not really.

So I called my mom and told her about it. Her first comment was “You need to go home and hide under the covers”. HAHAHA!  But then on a more serious note, I told her I had been studying the subject of patience with Beth Moore. We laughed together and I realized that I had just had practical life experiences to encourage me to be patient.

I know this is a LONG post, but hang in there. We are getting to the meat of the meal. How do we have patience? How can we have patience? What gives us that?

Paul is speaking to us in I Thessalonians 1:3: “ Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father;

How do we get patience? …through hope…hope in what? Hope in our LORD JESUS CHRIST.

What is Hope?
Hope is a desire of some good with expectation of obtaining it. “Biblical hope is a positive outlook toward an unexpected end” – Beth Moore

We can have patience knowing that we have an hope, hope in eternity (heaven), hope in an expected end -> (others going to heaven through our testimony).

 Look at Job.  Job lost his kids, his wealth and his health in a VERY short time, but he had hope. Where did he get it?

Job 23:8-10 says “ Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: On the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him: But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold.

Job was at such a low time in his life. He couldn’t feel God or even perceive him but GET THIS.  We may lose our path but God never loses us.

1. When we are in the middle of the trial, know that God still knows where we are and He's with us.

2. Also know that it's a time that we can shine His light. 

“...when we are tried, we SHALL come forth as gold".

Gold is ONLY as costly as how many times it’s been run through a fire.  24k means its been burned 24 times. The more you are brought through the fire the more your light will shine through, making you a rare vessel for Him.

“The chief objective of the refiner is to bring the gold to a point of greatest reflection” 

Romans 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” It won’t always be easy but it will be worth it.

We have Christ in us so when we go through those fires, we can reflect Him. 

“It is the light which exposes it’s qualities” –Beth Moore.  The refiners fire is painful but we have hope. The Refiner is helping to conform us to His likeness.

Friends, patience is HARD but when we go through trials whether small or LARGE we get the chance to reflect Christ. Our kids see us, our friends see us. What are we reflecting?

We have HOPE in eternity. We have hope in conforming to Christ. We have God and that’s enough. 

So let’s take a deep breath. Lift our hands and hearts up to God. Ask the Father to guide us, the Son to cleanse us and the Holy Spirit to fill us up. Let God give you the patience you need to get through this fire and reflect upward.

Col. 1:27 “To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:” - Rejoicing in the Present

*Thanks to Beth Moore for her Bible Study, Living Beyond Yourself where I got a lot of help and of course to my Father in Heaven who guided my heart.