The Weekly Encourager – July 10, 2012 – Praying for Patience

If you can read this, it means you have power. Take a moment now to thank God for it!

The last two weeks have been a time of trials. On a Monday morning, I was pulling out trash that passersby had thrown into our ivy, when hornets (as in “mad as”) covered my arms and began stinging me multiple times. While trying to beat them off, I ran into the house. Dave happened to be home sick with a bad cold, so he helped me make a baking soda paste. Although I did what I knew to do and what the internet said to do, the stings got worse instead of better. I could see the venom spreading out under the skin. The pain and itching were difficult to bear, keeping me awake for most of two nights. I prayed for patience, realizing that this trial could be an answer to a previous prayer for patience. I asked others to pray. On Wednesday afternoon, I went to the doctor's office and was prescribed a steroid, which helped immediately. That was the week I had “planned” to finish a big job at home, so I kept on working and praying. I found that, despite the stings, the Lord helped me to soldier on. In fact, keeping on with the task, however slowly, helped take my mind off the pain. The task itself – making slipcovers for two settees – required a lot of patience, and the stings just added to that. I found that I had to depend on the Lord hour by hour.

Around the time the stings got better, I got Dave's cold, but it seemed no big deal after the hornet stings. On that Friday, I finally finished the slipcovers, just before a big derecho storm hit our area. Our power went out, but I was thanking God that I had just turned off the sewing machine before it happened! God was kind. I also thanked God that my kids were okay and that I had recently purchased very nice emergency lanterns for us and for each of them! In addition, we had been invited to a wedding several hundred miles away that weekend, and I was glad that we had decided not to go, since I was far too sick to travel and would have missed the wedding anyway. After the rain came the heat, and we had no AC or even fans working. Meanwhile, I was coughing and sneezing and feeling nauseous and tired all the time due to the cold. Yet I still thanked God for good health in general, trusting that the illness would pass after a few days. My suffering is nothing compared to chronic pain that some of my friends endure. Trust in the Lord, this is all part of God's sovereign plan.

When our power was restored, Dave walked in and said, “It feels like magic!” Indeed it did. The days without power made me so much more grateful for the fact that we live in a home which almost always has electricity, internet, central air and heat, and hot and cold running water. My cold was getting worse, but at least we had power. I spent a lot of time reading and sleeping, because that was about all I could do. I felt awful, but I could thank God that I had time to catch up on reading. We had two weeks of record-breaking heat in the Washington area; I prayed with feeling for people still without power. Church was canceled because we meet in a fire station and it was being used as a cooling center for those without power. Yesterday, exactly two weeks from the hornet event, I finally felt well enough to do some physical labor. The house really needed vacuuming, but I couldn't figure out the new vacuum! I was frustrated, but I found some other jobs to do instead. Another test of my patience!

Why am I writing all this? On Sunday, back at church after two weeks, I was sharing with a friend whose opinion I respect. Still not feeling very well, I made a flip comment, “Be careful when you pray for patience heh heh” which I meant as dry humor. Unfortunately, it came out as superstition along the lines of “be careful what you wish for” which we hear floating around in the world today. She was right to correct me. Although I didn't mean it that way at all, I clearly was giving the wrong impression. An expression of bad theology might cause others to stumble. She was right to remind me that Christians should never be superstitious, yet some are. I told her that, having grown up with two highly rational parents, I am probably the least superstitious of anyone she knows, so I didn't think about it that way. Instead of “be careful” what I should have said was, “I know that the Lord is answering my prayers for patience.”

Should Christians pray for patience? Absolutely! Patience is one of the fruits of the Spirit. We earnestly desire to be more like Jesus Christ every day, and that means manifesting the fruits in our daily lives. But, although I take vitamins every day, God didn't make a patience pill – drat! The only way to get more patience is to get more trials. This skill can be learned only through practice. Therefore we continue to pray for patience. The beauty of this process is that when trials come, we can ask and see Him helping us to bear up under these trials. I want to encourage anyone reading this that our God is faithful to answer prayer, and He is kind and loving to those who seek Him. I have seen Him give me a thankful heart despite difficulties. I have seen Him support me in time of trial. He is right there, next to me, just waiting to be asked! My soul, “you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” - 1 Peter 2:3

“I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth....O taste and see that the Lord is good; how blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him! O fear the Lord, you His saints; for to those who fear Him, there is no want....They who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing....Many are the afflictions of the righteous; but the Lord delivers him out of them all.” - Psalm 34: 1,8-10, 19

Praying for patience,