The fruit of the Spirit is…patience… Galatians 5:22
Let’s face it. Some people are just irksome. These are the folks who get on our last nerve. They know how to push all our buttons including those we didn’t know we had. Whether it’s the things they say, how they act or their overall demeanor, there’s something about them that we find hard to handle.
After dealing with them for awhile, we are tempted to give them a good tongue-lashing with the hope that maybe they will change or at least dial down what’s bothering us. If that doesn’t work, we have the option to just abandon them, because they’re too much trouble to be around.
The Christian, however, has a higher calling. Paul tells us that part of the fruit of the Spirit is patience. The word for patience means something more than learning how to wait your turn in the checkout line at Wal-Mart. The word actually means longsuffering.
Vine’s Expository Dictionary indicates that “longsuffering is that quality of self-restraint in the face of provocation which does not hastily retaliate or promptly punish; it is the opposite of anger and is associated with mercy.”
I want you to think about that definition for a minute. What tends to provoke you to hasty retaliation? What causes you to promptly punish others through word or deed? What gives rise to the kind of anger that quickly spills out on others?
The answers to these questions will be different for each one of us. But they all have one thing in common. They are the natural reactions of our fallen human nature. When someone irritates us, our unguarded reflex is to lash out. We want to put them in their place or somehow punish them for how they have wronged us.
But the quality of longsuffering calls for something else. In the face of these very wrongs, believers are to practice self-restraint. We intentionally choose not to retaliate or punish. We put a curb on our anger rather than allowing it to spew on those who have offended us. After all, aren’t all of us irksome to somebody? Indeed we are.
As with all of the aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, the ability to be longsuffering is directly connected with the quality of our walk with Christ. In particular it is associated with the degree we have come to understand and appreciate the grace we have received from God. For there can be no doubt but that we are irksome to God at times. We do things that violate the relationship we have with him. But He does not act in prompt retaliation. He does not seek to quickly punish. He refuses to pursue reactionary anger. Instead He comes to us in grace.
So if you are struggling with being longsuffering, the answer is not to try to ramp up your willpower to keep yourself from reacting the next time somebody pushes one of your buttons. That may last for awhile, but the inner churn will eventually spill out of you. Instead let me encourage you to reflect on the many ways God has graced you over the years. Think about your irksome ways and how God has been longsuffering toward you in response.
The more you focus on these things, the greater your level of grace will be toward others the next time they find that last nerve to irritate.