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The fruit of the Spirit, as Paul writes in Galatians 5:22, includes "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." The Greek word for fruit is karpos, which means that which originates or comes from something—an effect, a result. The fruit of the Spirit is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer.
Longsuffering is translated in some Bibles as patience, endurance, or long-suffering. It is the capacity to suffer patiently. The Bible establishes that God Himself is longsuffering. Psalm 86:15 declares, "But you, O Lord, are a God full of compassion and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth." Paul, in 1 Timothy 1:16, writes that "God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience."
When we say yes to Jesus and accept Him as Lord, the Holy Spirit comes inside us and begins to work to conform us to the image of Jesus. The outward expression of this divine nature is what we call the fruit of the Spirit. Yet somehow, many of us have exempted ourselves from longsuffering. We want everything to be wonderful, but we haven't embraced the reality that suffering is an integral part of walking with God.
Throughout the Bible, we see people who suffered because of their faith and their love for God. Daniel was thrown into a lion's den. His three friends—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—were thrown into a furnace. Joseph was thrown in jail. Job lost everything. Yet in heaven, God was bragging about Job. We often think that when God is bragging about us, life will be easy. But God was like, "Have you seen my guy?" And then the guy was going through it. God sends trials to those He trusts, or those He wants to trust.
When Paul wrote to Timothy, his young protégé, he said in 2 Timothy 2:3, "Therefore endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." Paul wasn't speaking empty words—he was speaking from experience. In 2 Corinthians 11:24-28, he lists what he suffered: "Five times I received from the Jewish leaders forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole day and night adrift at sea. I have been constantly on the move. I have faced danger from rivers, from bandits, from my own people, from Gentiles, in the city, in the country, at sea, and from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food."
I want to issue a public apology to you on behalf of every pastor you have ever had and every preacher you have ever heard. We have preached a savior without His suffering. We have taught about a prince without his pains. We have presented a Christ without His cross. We have given you a gospel without acknowledging the gruesome suffering that sometimes comes with it.
We have not taught you to embrace Paul's prayer in Philippians 3:10: "that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering." Paul doubles down in Colossians 1:24: "I now rejoice in my suffering." Not only is he suffering, but he rejoices in his suffering.
Peter says the same in 1 Peter 4:13: "Rather, be glad that you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may be full of joy when his glory is revealed."
Our walk with Christ is not absent of suffering. We live in a fallen world that inflicts pain on its inhabitants. We live amongst people who sometimes can be used by the enemy to inflict pain and suffering. If we embrace a theology that is void of pain, we will produce weak Christians who flee and fall away when things get hard.
Proverbs 24:10 says, "If you fall to pieces in a crisis, there wasn't much to you in the first place." The test is in the crisis. There is coming a time when there will be a globalization of Christian persecution. If we are not practicing this fruit now—how to suffer for Christ—it is going to be very hard to live in these days and in the days to come.
But I'm glad that is not where the story ends. Jesus promises in John 16:33: "These things I have spoken to you that in me you will have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world."
You are not in pain just to be in pain. You are in pain with the assurance of victory at the end. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, "For we are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed."
Matthew 24:13 says, "But he who endures till the end will be saved." Say it to yourself: "I'm still here. I'm still standing." There is victory in suffering. There is promotion in pain. There is increase in tribulation.
God promised the children of Israel in Exodus 1:12: "The more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread, and the more alarmed the Egyptians became." I believe that God is working behind the scenes through what you're going through. He's asking, "Can you just stick it out with me? I'm working something greater than your mind can conceive."
Longsuffering is faithfulness on another level. Faithfulness keeps you running in spite of obstacles. Longsuffering keeps you standing despite challenges.
Longsuffering is that force that undergirds the other fruit. Just when the devil thinks you're going to stop loving because of how mean someone treated you, longsuffering kicks in and keeps you loving. Just when the devil thinks you're going to lose your joy because of the circumstances around you, longsuffering sustains your joy. Just when you're about to lose your peace because of the trials you're going through, longsuffering keeps your peace intact.
Longsuffering doesn't just endure pressure—it endures it with a sweet attitude, with joy. It is triggered by love and sustained by joy. In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, Paul writes: "Love suffers long. Love is longsuffering... Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
Patience and faith are power twins. When you pray and believe God for something, patience keeps you in place until you receive it. Longsuffering helps us avoid wavering between faith and unbelief, between faith and doubt. James 1:6 says, "But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind."
Abraham, in Romans 4:20, "did not waver at the promise through unbelief." Longsuffering sustains our faith between the prayer and the answer, between the promise and the promised land. Hebrews 6:12 says, "So that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience obtained the promise."
Longsuffering keeps you standing until what is real in the spirit becomes apparent in the physical. Hebrews 10:36 says, "For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. You have need of patient endurance."
This is not passive waiting. This is active waiting, expressed in your continued prayer, your continued praise, your continued thanksgiving, your continued confession of what you believe God has given to you. Patience keeps me standing while God is working.
In Luke 8:15, Jesus tells the parable of the sower: "But the ones that fell on good soil are those who, hearing the word, retain it in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience."
Patience helps you keep hold of the word of God until it bears fruit in your life. This means keeping the word on repeat, meditating on it, confessing it, practicing it patiently. It makes no logical sense to think that by hearing a message one time, you'll get everything God has for you. By Wednesday, you'll forget 75% of what was said.
We have to be patient enough for the word of God to bear fruit through our flesh. When you sow the seed of God's word in your heart, you have to be patient enough for it to grow through your flesh, just as you plant a seed in the ground and wait for it to germinate. The fact that it hasn't germinated upwards doesn't mean it's not taking root downwards.
John 15:5 says, "I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who remain in me and I in them will produce much fruit." It is in the remaining that we produce fruit. Not in hearing it once, not in reading it once, not in practicing it once. Renewing your mind is a process because your mind has been adapted to a pattern of living. Your spirit is new, but your mind has to be taught to allow the life of God to flow through you.
James 1:2-4 says, "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, and let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing."
The fruit of longsuffering keeps you connected to God long enough for Him to work on you. God needs time to work on your mouth, your mind, your phone habits, your financial habits, what you believe. When we pray and believe God for something, it's an opportunity for us to get something from God, but also for Him to get something from us. While you're praying, God has your attention. He can work on your mind. It would be embarrassing to get into a room you've been praying for twenty years to enter, only to have your mouth or attitude ruin it in one hour. You did not wait on God's table long enough to prepare you for what He has for you.
Isaiah 40:29-31 says: "He gives power to the weak and to those who have no might. He increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young shall utterly fall. But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint."
As you wait on God, He does not promise relief; He promises strength. Whether or not we take advantage of all God can do in difficult circumstances is determined by our attitude in the circumstances. Are we worrying, or are we waiting on God as He intends—actively, patiently?
Ephesians 4:1-3 says: "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the call that you have been called, with loneliness, with gentleness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace."
Unity is impossible without patience and longsuffering. Longsuffering helps you forgive more easily and more quickly. The more patient you are, the more forgiving you are, and the more unity there is.
Colossians 3:12-13 says: "Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender-hearted mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do."
When offense isn't met with longsuffering and patience, it leads to bitterness, resentment, and anger. But when offense is met with longsuffering and patience, it leads to forgiveness, mercy, and love. It keeps that agape love—that God-kind of love—still flowing.
Longsuffering is choosing restraint over revenge. It means saying, "I'm going to walk in love, in goodness, in kindness, regardless of what the other person does to me." Someone once said that revenge is best served cold. But I believe the best kind of revenge is served divine—when I hand you over to God to deal with you, because most times we play God.
Longsuffering keeps us hoping that somebody can get better. It keeps you having hope that somebody can encounter God and change. Remember where you were before you met Jesus. Someone believed you could. Somebody kept preaching. Somebody kept inviting. Somebody kept believing the best in you. Longsuffering keeps us from acting in haste, acting in frustration.
Longsuffering doesn't mean we are pushovers or that we can be pushed over. It doesn't mean we don't hold somebody accountable or confront them. It means we're confronting them because we love them and we know they can be better than where they are. Jesus told Peter, "I've prayed for you. You're going to betray me. You're going to deny me. But I've prayed for you." Jesus was holding Peter accountable while showing him love.
One word: practice. Practice with small things every day.
James 1:2-3 says, "My dear brothers and sisters, when you have all kinds of troubles, consider it an opportunity for great joy, for you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow." We must learn how to practice endurance. It's painful, but don't distract yourself from this moment, this pain, this challenge. Be in it. Don't try to run away from it. Just be in it.
Practice yielding to the Holy Spirit every day. Practice obeying the leading of the Holy Spirit. Practice patience.
When you want to grow your muscle, what do you do? Reps. Wait over time. Just keep repeating it over and over again. And one day you realize that the things that were hard for you are now easy.
In the chaos of it all, practice turning your attention to God. Hebrews 12:2 says: "Looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame."
Some people argue that Jesus was able to do it because He was God. Yes, He was God, but when He died, He was dying. The Bible says He endured the cross. He despised the shame. Most of us are so averse to embarrassment that anything leading to embarrassment, we don't want to be part of. But He despised the embarrassment and has now reaped the reward of maintaining His focus on God.
Longsuffering is focus-dependent. It is what you're focused on that determines how long you last. When I go to physical therapy, the technician puts me in painful positions and says, "Breathe into the pain." Then they say, "Focus on your breath." I clinch everything I can, but as I focus on my breath—deep breaths in and out—the pain changes. The position hasn't changed, but my pain has changed because my focus was different. It is focus that determines how long you last.
No story captures this better than Acts 16. Paul and Silas go into a city to preach. A girl possessed by a demon follows them, saying true things but in the wrong spirit. They cast the demon out of her. Those who were profiting from her oppression incite a mob against them. Paul and Silas are beaten and jailed. They should be offended—at the mob, at the jailer, maybe even at God. Yet, around midnight, they are praying and singing hymns to God in chains.
They turn their attention from the chains to God. That's what worship does—it turns your attention from the pain, from the people, to God. Suddenly, there's a great earthquake. The foundation of the prison shakes. All the doors fly open, and the chains of every prisoner fall off.
The jailer wakes up, sees the doors are open, assumes the prisoners have escaped. He draws his sword to kill himself. But Paul shouts, "Stop! Don't harm yourself! We are all here!"
Think about that. The chains are fallen. The doors are open. The walls are cracked. The prisoners are free to run. Yet Paul says, "We are all here. We did not escape." They did not escape when it was most convenient. They didn't sabotage the mission. They stayed.
"I can't give up now," as the song says. "I've gone too far from where I started from. Nobody told me the road was going to be easy. But I believe He didn't bring me this far to leave me here."
I'm not escaping at the earliest convenience. I'm sticking through it. I'm staying long enough for God to do and work a greater purpose.
What's remarkable is that the real breakthrough wasn't that the chains fell. The real breakthrough was that the jailer and his family came to Jesus. God was looking for two men willing to be longsuffering enough to bring a family to Him. To endure jail, not escape when the chains fall, not escape when the doors open, but to be so full of the fruit of longsuffering that they stay long enough for a family to meet Jesus.
Purpose in your pain, God is working. Strength in your pain, God is working. Victory in your pain, God is working. Promotion in your pain, God is working. Deliverance in your pain, God is working.
You are not by yourself. The Bible says He is a present help. He does not outsource His intervention. He's looking for people who will stay in the oven long enough.
When an elevator is constructed, it goes through a CAT 5 stress test to check if it can hold what it was designed to hold. God has a big assignment for you, but He's putting you through a stress test to see if He can carry the responsibility of what He has for you. One dimension of the test is to just hold you, suspend you, keep you in a holding pattern to see how long you can carry that weight. At what point do you fold? At what point do you give up? At what point do you seek relief instead of standing for the purpose God is working out?
There's a dimension of longsuffering where, when the doors open, you're not quick to run out. Why? Because you're so yielded to Jesus that you know He did not forsake you. As the poem says, "When I see one set of footprints, it's not me walking alone. Those are the footprints of Jesus carrying me through it."
For somebody here, you're not alone. God is just using this to stress test you. When He is done, you will come out as fine gold, purified.
I bear the fruit of longsuffering and patience. I am patient and kind. I am patient enough to love others. I am patient when I am loved and when I am hurt. I am patient enough to forgive others. I am patient enough for God to work on me and through me. I am patient enough for God's promises to come true for me. I am patient enough for God's word to bear fruit in my life. I am patient enough for God to strengthen me. I am patient with small things and with big things. I am patient whether it's easy or hard.
I do not complain in adversity. I do not give up in difficulty. I stand tall in the storm. I will keep standing until I experience all God has given me in the name of Jesus.
I know it's painful, but choose joy. Hold your joy up. Hold your peace up. Hold the soundness of your mind up. God is working. Believe it.
The fruit of the Spirit, as Paul writes in Galatians 5:22, includes "love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control." The Greek word for fruit is karpos, which means that which originates or comes from something—an effect, a result. The fruit of the Spirit is the result of the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer.
Longsuffering is translated in some Bibles as patience, endurance, or long-suffering. It is the capacity to suffer patiently. The Bible establishes that God Himself is longsuffering. Psalm 86:15 declares, "But you, O Lord, are a God full of compassion and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in mercy and truth." Paul, in 1 Timothy 1:16, writes that "God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience."
When we say yes to Jesus and accept Him as Lord, the Holy Spirit comes inside us and begins to work to conform us to the image of Jesus. The outward expression of this divine nature is what we call the fruit of the Spirit. Yet somehow, many of us have exempted ourselves from longsuffering. We want everything to be wonderful, but we haven't embraced the reality that suffering is an integral part of walking with God.
Throughout the Bible, we see people who suffered because of their faith and their love for God. Daniel was thrown into a lion's den. His three friends—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—were thrown into a furnace. Joseph was thrown in jail. Job lost everything. Yet in heaven, God was bragging about Job. We often think that when God is bragging about us, life will be easy. But God was like, "Have you seen my guy?" And then the guy was going through it. God sends trials to those He trusts, or those He wants to trust.
When Paul wrote to Timothy, his young protégé, he said in 2 Timothy 2:3, "Therefore endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." Paul wasn't speaking empty words—he was speaking from experience. In 2 Corinthians 11:24-28, he lists what he suffered: "Five times I received from the Jewish leaders forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole day and night adrift at sea. I have been constantly on the move. I have faced danger from rivers, from bandits, from my own people, from Gentiles, in the city, in the country, at sea, and from false believers. I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food."
I want to issue a public apology to you on behalf of every pastor you have ever had and every preacher you have ever heard. We have preached a savior without His suffering. We have taught about a prince without his pains. We have presented a Christ without His cross. We have given you a gospel without acknowledging the gruesome suffering that sometimes comes with it.
We have not taught you to embrace Paul's prayer in Philippians 3:10: "that I might know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering." Paul doubles down in Colossians 1:24: "I now rejoice in my suffering." Not only is he suffering, but he rejoices in his suffering.
Peter says the same in 1 Peter 4:13: "Rather, be glad that you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may be full of joy when his glory is revealed."
Our walk with Christ is not absent of suffering. We live in a fallen world that inflicts pain on its inhabitants. We live amongst people who sometimes can be used by the enemy to inflict pain and suffering. If we embrace a theology that is void of pain, we will produce weak Christians who flee and fall away when things get hard.
Proverbs 24:10 says, "If you fall to pieces in a crisis, there wasn't much to you in the first place." The test is in the crisis. There is coming a time when there will be a globalization of Christian persecution. If we are not practicing this fruit now—how to suffer for Christ—it is going to be very hard to live in these days and in the days to come.
But I'm glad that is not where the story ends. Jesus promises in John 16:33: "These things I have spoken to you that in me you will have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But be of good cheer. I have overcome the world."
You are not in pain just to be in pain. You are in pain with the assurance of victory at the end. The Bible says in 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, "For we are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down but not destroyed."
Matthew 24:13 says, "But he who endures till the end will be saved." Say it to yourself: "I'm still here. I'm still standing." There is victory in suffering. There is promotion in pain. There is increase in tribulation.
God promised the children of Israel in Exodus 1:12: "The more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread, and the more alarmed the Egyptians became." I believe that God is working behind the scenes through what you're going through. He's asking, "Can you just stick it out with me? I'm working something greater than your mind can conceive."
Longsuffering is faithfulness on another level. Faithfulness keeps you running in spite of obstacles. Longsuffering keeps you standing despite challenges.
Longsuffering is that force that undergirds the other fruit. Just when the devil thinks you're going to stop loving because of how mean someone treated you, longsuffering kicks in and keeps you loving. Just when the devil thinks you're going to lose your joy because of the circumstances around you, longsuffering sustains your joy. Just when you're about to lose your peace because of the trials you're going through, longsuffering keeps your peace intact.
Longsuffering doesn't just endure pressure—it endures it with a sweet attitude, with joy. It is triggered by love and sustained by joy. In 1 Corinthians 13:4-7, Paul writes: "Love suffers long. Love is longsuffering... Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things."
Patience and faith are power twins. When you pray and believe God for something, patience keeps you in place until you receive it. Longsuffering helps us avoid wavering between faith and unbelief, between faith and doubt. James 1:6 says, "But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind."
Abraham, in Romans 4:20, "did not waver at the promise through unbelief." Longsuffering sustains our faith between the prayer and the answer, between the promise and the promised land. Hebrews 6:12 says, "So that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience obtained the promise."
Longsuffering keeps you standing until what is real in the spirit becomes apparent in the physical. Hebrews 10:36 says, "For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise. You have need of patient endurance."
This is not passive waiting. This is active waiting, expressed in your continued prayer, your continued praise, your continued thanksgiving, your continued confession of what you believe God has given to you. Patience keeps me standing while God is working.
In Luke 8:15, Jesus tells the parable of the sower: "But the ones that fell on good soil are those who, hearing the word, retain it in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience."
Patience helps you keep hold of the word of God until it bears fruit in your life. This means keeping the word on repeat, meditating on it, confessing it, practicing it patiently. It makes no logical sense to think that by hearing a message one time, you'll get everything God has for you. By Wednesday, you'll forget 75% of what was said.
We have to be patient enough for the word of God to bear fruit through our flesh. When you sow the seed of God's word in your heart, you have to be patient enough for it to grow through your flesh, just as you plant a seed in the ground and wait for it to germinate. The fact that it hasn't germinated upwards doesn't mean it's not taking root downwards.
John 15:5 says, "I am the vine and you are the branches. Those who remain in me and I in them will produce much fruit." It is in the remaining that we produce fruit. Not in hearing it once, not in reading it once, not in practicing it once. Renewing your mind is a process because your mind has been adapted to a pattern of living. Your spirit is new, but your mind has to be taught to allow the life of God to flow through you.
James 1:2-4 says, "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, and let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing."
The fruit of longsuffering keeps you connected to God long enough for Him to work on you. God needs time to work on your mouth, your mind, your phone habits, your financial habits, what you believe. When we pray and believe God for something, it's an opportunity for us to get something from God, but also for Him to get something from us. While you're praying, God has your attention. He can work on your mind. It would be embarrassing to get into a room you've been praying for twenty years to enter, only to have your mouth or attitude ruin it in one hour. You did not wait on God's table long enough to prepare you for what He has for you.
Isaiah 40:29-31 says: "He gives power to the weak and to those who have no might. He increases strength. Even the youth shall faint and be weary, and the young shall utterly fall. But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings as eagles. They shall run and not be weary. They shall walk and not faint."
As you wait on God, He does not promise relief; He promises strength. Whether or not we take advantage of all God can do in difficult circumstances is determined by our attitude in the circumstances. Are we worrying, or are we waiting on God as He intends—actively, patiently?
Ephesians 4:1-3 says: "I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the call that you have been called, with loneliness, with gentleness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace."
Unity is impossible without patience and longsuffering. Longsuffering helps you forgive more easily and more quickly. The more patient you are, the more forgiving you are, and the more unity there is.
Colossians 3:12-13 says: "Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender-hearted mercy, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do."
When offense isn't met with longsuffering and patience, it leads to bitterness, resentment, and anger. But when offense is met with longsuffering and patience, it leads to forgiveness, mercy, and love. It keeps that agape love—that God-kind of love—still flowing.
Longsuffering is choosing restraint over revenge. It means saying, "I'm going to walk in love, in goodness, in kindness, regardless of what the other person does to me." Someone once said that revenge is best served cold. But I believe the best kind of revenge is served divine—when I hand you over to God to deal with you, because most times we play God.
Longsuffering keeps us hoping that somebody can get better. It keeps you having hope that somebody can encounter God and change. Remember where you were before you met Jesus. Someone believed you could. Somebody kept preaching. Somebody kept inviting. Somebody kept believing the best in you. Longsuffering keeps us from acting in haste, acting in frustration.
Longsuffering doesn't mean we are pushovers or that we can be pushed over. It doesn't mean we don't hold somebody accountable or confront them. It means we're confronting them because we love them and we know they can be better than where they are. Jesus told Peter, "I've prayed for you. You're going to betray me. You're going to deny me. But I've prayed for you." Jesus was holding Peter accountable while showing him love.
One word: practice. Practice with small things every day.
James 1:2-3 says, "My dear brothers and sisters, when you have all kinds of troubles, consider it an opportunity for great joy, for you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow." We must learn how to practice endurance. It's painful, but don't distract yourself from this moment, this pain, this challenge. Be in it. Don't try to run away from it. Just be in it.
Practice yielding to the Holy Spirit every day. Practice obeying the leading of the Holy Spirit. Practice patience.
When you want to grow your muscle, what do you do? Reps. Wait over time. Just keep repeating it over and over again. And one day you realize that the things that were hard for you are now easy.
In the chaos of it all, practice turning your attention to God. Hebrews 12:2 says: "Looking unto Jesus, the author and the finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame."
Some people argue that Jesus was able to do it because He was God. Yes, He was God, but when He died, He was dying. The Bible says He endured the cross. He despised the shame. Most of us are so averse to embarrassment that anything leading to embarrassment, we don't want to be part of. But He despised the embarrassment and has now reaped the reward of maintaining His focus on God.
Longsuffering is focus-dependent. It is what you're focused on that determines how long you last. When I go to physical therapy, the technician puts me in painful positions and says, "Breathe into the pain." Then they say, "Focus on your breath." I clinch everything I can, but as I focus on my breath—deep breaths in and out—the pain changes. The position hasn't changed, but my pain has changed because my focus was different. It is focus that determines how long you last.
No story captures this better than Acts 16. Paul and Silas go into a city to preach. A girl possessed by a demon follows them, saying true things but in the wrong spirit. They cast the demon out of her. Those who were profiting from her oppression incite a mob against them. Paul and Silas are beaten and jailed. They should be offended—at the mob, at the jailer, maybe even at God. Yet, around midnight, they are praying and singing hymns to God in chains.
They turn their attention from the chains to God. That's what worship does—it turns your attention from the pain, from the people, to God. Suddenly, there's a great earthquake. The foundation of the prison shakes. All the doors fly open, and the chains of every prisoner fall off.
The jailer wakes up, sees the doors are open, assumes the prisoners have escaped. He draws his sword to kill himself. But Paul shouts, "Stop! Don't harm yourself! We are all here!"
Think about that. The chains are fallen. The doors are open. The walls are cracked. The prisoners are free to run. Yet Paul says, "We are all here. We did not escape." They did not escape when it was most convenient. They didn't sabotage the mission. They stayed.
"I can't give up now," as the song says. "I've gone too far from where I started from. Nobody told me the road was going to be easy. But I believe He didn't bring me this far to leave me here."
I'm not escaping at the earliest convenience. I'm sticking through it. I'm staying long enough for God to do and work a greater purpose.
What's remarkable is that the real breakthrough wasn't that the chains fell. The real breakthrough was that the jailer and his family came to Jesus. God was looking for two men willing to be longsuffering enough to bring a family to Him. To endure jail, not escape when the chains fall, not escape when the doors open, but to be so full of the fruit of longsuffering that they stay long enough for a family to meet Jesus.
Purpose in your pain, God is working. Strength in your pain, God is working. Victory in your pain, God is working. Promotion in your pain, God is working. Deliverance in your pain, God is working.
You are not by yourself. The Bible says He is a present help. He does not outsource His intervention. He's looking for people who will stay in the oven long enough.
When an elevator is constructed, it goes through a CAT 5 stress test to check if it can hold what it was designed to hold. God has a big assignment for you, but He's putting you through a stress test to see if He can carry the responsibility of what He has for you. One dimension of the test is to just hold you, suspend you, keep you in a holding pattern to see how long you can carry that weight. At what point do you fold? At what point do you give up? At what point do you seek relief instead of standing for the purpose God is working out?
There's a dimension of longsuffering where, when the doors open, you're not quick to run out. Why? Because you're so yielded to Jesus that you know He did not forsake you. As the poem says, "When I see one set of footprints, it's not me walking alone. Those are the footprints of Jesus carrying me through it."
For somebody here, you're not alone. God is just using this to stress test you. When He is done, you will come out as fine gold, purified.
I bear the fruit of longsuffering and patience. I am patient and kind. I am patient enough to love others. I am patient when I am loved and when I am hurt. I am patient enough to forgive others. I am patient enough for God to work on me and through me. I am patient enough for God's promises to come true for me. I am patient enough for God's word to bear fruit in my life. I am patient enough for God to strengthen me. I am patient with small things and with big things. I am patient whether it's easy or hard.
I do not complain in adversity. I do not give up in difficulty. I stand tall in the storm. I will keep standing until I experience all God has given me in the name of Jesus.
I know it's painful, but choose joy. Hold your joy up. Hold your peace up. Hold the soundness of your mind up. God is working. Believe it.
