Ponder This:
How does God's patience impact our understanding of His character and love?
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Scriptures To Consider:
Psalm 103:8- "The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in love"
2 Peter 3:9- "The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise as some understand slowness, but is patient toward you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance".
1 Timothy 1:16 - But God had mercy on me so that Christ Jesus could use me as a prime example of his great patience with even the worst sinners. Then others will realize that they, too, can believe in him and receive eternal life.
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Reflections From The PrayerBowl Team:
It is a blessing to be created by and serve a patient God. When we genuinely grasp the depth of His patience, we begin to recognize His abundant kindness and love, which grant us continuous mercy and grace. God doesn't say "now or never", but patiently provides us opportunities for growth and change. As our knowledge of Him deepens, we gain a clearer understanding of His amazing love. We realize His greatest desire is for all people to know Him, repent, be saved, allow Jesus to dwell in their hearts, and spend eternity with Him. All praise to our gracious God, who patiently allows us time to respond to His beautiful invitation.
I am so thankful for God's Patience because.... I feel blessed to know God is patient with me through my faults and mistakes, He continues to love and guide me. God loves steadily, kindly and does not give up on us. His patience shows me that I am a work in progress, and that it's okay not to have everything figured out right away. Knowing that God is patient and compassionate helps me realize how deeply He loves me, It inspires me to be more patient with others and myself. It also teaches me that showing patience to others is a way of loving like God does.
God's patience is a major and repeated theme throughout the Bible. Countless times, God is patient with his people, giving them chance after chance to turn towards him. Seeing how patient the Lord has been with his people for all time and knowing he is unchanging teaches us about his character and that God is Love. 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 starts out with "Love is patient," and goes on to list all the other characteristics of Love. One time I was given the task of putting my own name in place of all the times "Love" was used in those verses. "Reagan is patient, Reagan is kind", and so on. CONVICTING!!
Even on the first line, we all fail the test of putting our names in this verse and it remaining true, but what happens when we say "God is Patient, God is kind." That, on the other hand, reads true!! How much grace! Because we know Love is Patience and God is Love, we can start to see that we can't even begin to truly understand how much God loves each of us because we are unable to Love in the same perfect way he does! What a blessing to have such a patient creator who displays and lavishes perfect Love on us.
