The Fruit of Patience

Max Lucado

0:00 / 0:00

The Fruit of Patience - Daily Devotional by Max Lucado

Impatience is selfishness with time. We don’t like to waste it. People get in our way and slow things down, so we burn them with impatience!

Patience recognizes that we share time with others; it’s not just our time. Patience knows other factors are at work—that some things can be sped up with encouragement, not flames of retribution. The best way to turn down the flame of impatience is with love.

“Love is patient.” Love is a fruit hanging from the tree of Galatians 5:22. It’s the first-fruit, and some say the most important. The seeds of love produce the harvest of all the other fruits: joy, peace, patience… So if you have the Holy Spirit, then you have the potential of making patience a part of your life. Thankfully, God is patient while you find that patience.

Share the Post:

Devotion by Max Lucado | The Almighty Jehovah | https://thealmightyJehovah.com

What Gabriel Never Expected

Prior to Bethlehem God gave us his messengers, his teachers, his words. But in the manger God gave us himself. Extraordinary, don’t you think? I imagine even Gabriel scratched his head at the idea of “God with us.” Gabriel surely was not one to question his God-given missions. When God sent, Gabriel went.

And when word got out that God was to become a human, Gabriel was no doubt enthused. He could envision the moment: The Messiah in a blazing chariot. The King descending on a fiery cloud. An explosion of light from which the Messiah would emerge. What he never expected, however, was a slip of paper with a Nazarene address. “God will become a baby,” it read. “Tell the mother to name the child Jesus. And tell her not to be afraid.”

Gods With Us Promise

Jesus understands you. He’s faced hunger, sorrow, and death and wants to face them with you. The Bible says Jesus “understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin” (Hebrews 4:15).

If Jesus understands our weaknesses, then so does God. Jesus was God in human form. He was God with us. That’s why Jesus is called Immanuel. Immanu means “with us.” El refers to Elohim, or God. So Immanuel is not an “above-us God” or a “somewhere-in-the-neighborhood God.” He came as the “with-us God.” All of us.

“I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). Search for restrictions on the promise, and you’ll find none. There’s no withholding tax on God’s “with us” promise. God is with us. What great news!

The Fruit of Patience