Godly Trait : Long Suffering
Long-Suffering defined by the bible means:
patiently enduring lasting offense or hardship.
having or showing patience in spite of troubles, especially those caused by other people.
We know long-suffering is a fruit of the spirit. It is listed in Galatians 5:22-23. God is the source of longsuffering because it is part of His character. He is patient with sinners. How long was God pulling us before we came to him, how long was he covering us when we were committing sin right in this face.
At the same time, God is longsuffering, waiting in loving patience for each person to come to Him for salvation.
Long-suffering is not a word we hear often and a lot of times it is because we have don’t like the latter half of the word which is suffer and then to put long it front that is a double whammy. So not only are you talking about suffering you talking about doing it for a long period of time. Long period of time could be 2 days for me and 2 years for you.
Colossians 3:12-13
Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do.
We as people don’t like to suffer in any way and because we don’t like to suffer, we point ourselves in positions of:
· compromise (I will just go along with it because I don’t want them to feel a certain way about me)
· disobedience (I just want obey God and do what he tells me because of what they think of me)
lower our standards (you looking at sin as it is not that bad)
Sometimes we don’t know why we are suffering. We say it is was for:
· Sin
· Generational Curses
But, what if your suffering is for righteous sake? God wants to show righteous through you, or get righteousness in you.
o Psalm 233 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.
o John 9:2 the disciples asked Jesus who sinned about the blind man was him or his parents? Jesus said neither it was for Gods Glory.
Sometimes your suffering is for God to get the Glory, sometimes it is to show you how much you really love God, are you faithful. Do you got what you think you got?
How to Long Suffer:
1. Pray – you want make it without communicating with God
2. Praise/ Worship – will help you for forget about the suffering and concentrate on the solution which is Jesus
3. Expect – to get something out of your suffering. My suffering is not in vain I’m going to grow, I’m going to have more love, more faith, more trust and etc..
1 Peter 5:10 says 10 But [a]may the God of all grace, who called [b]us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, [c]perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you. Whatever your while is there comes perfection, being established , your strength, and settlement.
Your long suffering is not in vain. This to shall pass.
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