Patience – Part 2

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

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Joyce Meyer (0:06)

I wrote this and I colored it in. I want you to be sure you hear this. I believe one of the greatest tragedies in life is wishing for what we don't have while not enjoying what we do have. I'm Joyce Meyer, and I believe that God can heal you everywhere you hurt.

Well, welcome to Enjoying Everyday Life. Thank you so much for tuning in and spending this time with us. I'm going to teach today on everybody's favorite subject, patience.

Everybody says, you know what happens when you get teaching on patience, you get a problem. It's interesting, the Greek word for patience, if you look up the definition, it says, it's a fruit of the spirit that can only grow under trial, which if you really think about it, if you have nothing to be patient about, you don't need patience. But patience is not waiting. You're going to wait whether you like it or not. Patience is how we act while we're waiting. That's the key. Philippians 2, 5 says, let this same attitude and purpose and humble mind be in you, which was in Christ Jesus. Let him be your example in humility, and humility does have to do with patience because we're not too good to wait. You know, everybody waits. And what happens when you're not patient is you're frustrated most of the time. So really doing yourself a favor if you learn how to be patient. And it is something that you have to practice. Some people have a little more of it than others, just naturally. My husband, I think, is naturally more patient than I may ever be. I don't know. But some people just, the way they're bent and given, they're more patient. But, and some people are more extremely unpatient. They can't put up with hardly anything. And I've grown a lot in that area, but I still need to grow. Suppose you get, you're traveling down the highway, and all of a sudden, traffic comes to a dead stop, and you look up ahead, and there's cars as far as you can see. Well, who's patient? You say, well, that's okay. I'll just sit here and pray. I'll get home when I'm supposed to. No, the first thing we do is, oh, no.

And if a driver does some dumb thing, and, you know, oh, I forgive you, no. We have to be careful as Christians that we don't make dirty signs.

How many of you know what I'm talking about? It's like, and the flesh is not patient on its own. If you don't believe that, just take a good look at any baby, and they want what they want when they want it, and they're going to scream and cry until they get it. So patience is something that God puts a seed of that in us at the new birth. A seed is planted in our spirit. Everything doesn't come full size working perfectly, but we have the ability now. We have the ability to love. We have the ability to be merciful. That ability is there, but you have to study the word in that area, and pray in that area, and it's like a farmer planting seeds. He plants the seeds, and all he can do is keep the weeds away and water the seed, and God has to do the rest. And who can work that out in their head? You put the seed in the ground, and then you wait. You wait, and you wait. Pretty soon, something shoots up out of the ground. You wait long enough, you plant a peach seed, and a few years go by, and you have a nice big peach tree. And God gives that example, that the farmer plants his seed, and one translation says, and then he goes to bed and gets up, goes to bed and gets up, goes to bed and gets up. And I love that. Sometimes that's all we can do, is just thank God that he's working. See, you have to die to the seed. You plant it, and you don't really know what you'll get, because you're learning to live by faith. And so, then you begin to see it work in your life, and then that gives you more faith to, you know, every time you walk by faith in something, and you see the breakthrough come by doing things God's way, then it gives you more ability to do the same thing the next time. And as years go by, you get stronger. Things that used to upset you don't bother you anymore. How many of you have things now that you used to get fried about, and now you're just like, oh, well, you know. So it is. I was getting ready to go upstairs the other morning because I study, got my office upstairs. And so I've usually got more in my hands than I should have getting ready to climb steps. And I had my stuff in this arm, and my coffee was sitting on this table. It's at the bottom of my steps. And I went to pick it up, and I just caught it, my little finger in it, and turned it over. And this is a glass. It's a table with a glass top. So the coffee not only went on top, it went underneath that glass. And the glass is very heavy. It was very hard for me to even try to clean it up. But I didn't skip a beat. I just said, oh, well, I guess I'll clean it up. You know, and I mean, there would have been a time when I was like, well, for crying out loud, I can't even get upstairs with my coffee without making a mess. You're stupid, stupid.