Love is Patient

We're starting a new series.

Uh, we're gonna be teaching um this whole month out of um the book of First Corinthians, chapter 13.

1 Corinthians 13 · chapter mention

And the series is called Love Is.

Okay, that's what we're gonna be calling it.

And uh it'll be four weeks.

And uh before we jump in, I do want to just take a moment and to kind of bring up the fact we're going to be talking about love, we're gonna be talking about relationships.

Um, but it this isn't just like a romance series, okay?

Singles don't check out.

Exactly right.

This is for you.

Singles don't check out, singles don't get angry, singles don't get online, and and throw shade because you're tired of February being love months.

Okay, romance, whatever, okay.

I promise you, uh, we're gonna be talking about uh relationships as a whole, and the concepts that we talk about will really uh be helpful in every relationship that you have.

In fact, it's probably worth noting that 1 Corinthians 13, while while it's probably the most read uh portion of scripture for like weddings and stuff, um, 1 Corinthians 13 wasn't written to marriages, it wasn't written to people in romantic relationships, it was actually written to a church that was about to fall apart and how they can find unity and how they can come to some foundational stuff.

So it was actually written to a community like ours, and that's how we're gonna really look at it.

Now So it applies to every relationship in your life, it not just our church community, but also to your marriage if you have one, or to your relationships at work, your kids, all of those kinds of things.

But yeah, absolutely.

So let's get into it.

Um, so let's start with um 1 Corinthians 13.

We're gonna start reading in verse 1 and we'll start talking about the context.

By the way, Shaylin, thank you.

Uh Shaylin and I worked on this content together, and uh just thank you for being a part of this.

And any point along the way, by the way, let's just throw uh, you know, we'll suspend conversational etiquette.

Like, feel free to interrupt me anytime you want.

All right.

Got it.

Like I like that's ever stopped me.

I appreciate the permission.

All right.

Here we go.

First Corinthians 13, starting in verse 1, says, if I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.

All right, so he's using a little hyperbole here out of the gate to basically say, if I knew every human language, if we think in our context, there are over 7,000 languages that are spoken on planet Earth right now.

All right, about a thousand of them don't use an alphabet of any kind.

They're just spoken, totally spoken languages with no way of writing.

And so if somehow you had the ability, you had the education that you could be dropped anywhere on planet Earth and you could not only speak the language but the dialect.

And by the way, if an angel fell out of heaven, you can speak angel too.

Okay, so if you had all that in your bag, but you didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or clanging symbol.

In other words, I would just be loud, making a bunch of noise, and frankly, a bit obnoxious.

So if you knew it all but you didn't have love, you would just be a know it all.

Is basically what verse one says.

Verse two, do you like that?

Sorry, that'll preach all by itself.

I can dig it.

I'm just okay.

Number two.

Okay, look at it.

He says, if I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn't love others, I would be nothing.

Okay, this is important to note because he's writing this to the Corinthians.

This this letter is tailor-made to these people.

So if you understand the context of Corinthians, let's let's think a little, let's learn a little bit about who these Corinthians are.

Okay, Paul has written more than one letter to these guys at this point, although it shows up in our Bible as 1 Corinthians.

In 1 Corinthians 5, he mentions this other letter that he already wrote to them.

And he says to them in 1 Corinthians 5, hey, remember that last letter I wrote you?

You totally misunderstood it.

Okay, you're misapplying what I what I uh wrote you.

So we know he wrote at least one other letter.

We don't have it, we wish we did, but we don't.

Maybe he wrote them more, okay.

But what we know about the Corinthians is what provokes Paul to write this letter is he says in chapter one, a mutual friend of ours named Chloe, who's a part of this church, sent me a 911 text saying, This church is about to cancel each other.

This thing's about to fall apart.

We're we're on the verge of a split, and and we've got so many issues, okay?

We're we are so divided, we're falling apart.

So in chapter one, he calls everyone to unity and he says, Guys, frankly, you have issues of maturity.

We need to deepen you.

You have everything, you're you're you're shallow, we need to deepen you.

And so he goes issue by issue, and you just see all of it.

Like he starts in chapter three, he's like, You guys are divided by personalities.

Some of you say, Well, I follow Paul, and some say I follow Apollos, and some say, I've just well, I just follow Jesus.

And he's like, Man, you guys are so divided among personalities, like your teenagers with posters in your locker of who's the best.

He's like, Come on, you got to raise the bar.

Uh, in chapter five, he says, you guys are not just living in sin, you're bragging about it.

So it's not like humans struggling with flesh, and I'm really trying to do better and I'm I'm in sin and I'm trying to correct it, and I need some accountability and I need some support.

No, he's like, you actually wear it as a badge of honor the way that you sin.

And then he goes on in chapter six, he's like, you guys are suing each other in court, and it's embarrassing.

Okay, the world sees you.

You're out there, you've got lawsuits against each other.

There's no unity among you.

And so you you've got to purify your community, okay, not to create a legalistic environment, but because the body of Christ is supposed to be known for our unity, so we have a community so healthy that the world is like, you know, I think I want to be a part of that.

But when you guys are worse than the world, then it's about the worst testimony and witness I can imagine.

And so then uh he goes on.

This is where in chapter 11, he's like, You guys are getting drunk during communion, okay?

Literally, okay, the way they were doing it.

Of course, they didn't do communion like we did with these little things of uh juice, okay.

What they did was they would go to someone's home and sort of relive the Last Supper, but it turned into a thing where the rich people came and they ate high off the hog and they drank the best wine, and then you had people um who were broke who had nothing.

And so the broke people sat around and watched the rich people get drunk and call it the Lord's Supper.

And he's like, You guys, and then and then he says within here, okay, like when he's talking about prophecies and mysteries and all this stuff, they were obsessed around spiritual hierarchy, who knows the mysteries of God, things like prophecy, things like uh speaking in other tongues, things like healing and miracles.

That's what I I love about the order of the scriptures in this, because Paul puts this really hard pause on that.

Because he's he in chapter 12, if you look at where 1 Corinthians 13 lands, in chapter 12, he's laying out here are all of those spiritual gifts that you guys are so obsessed with.

Here's here's what these things are.

Then in chapter 14, he gives an order for like this is how you use them in a public setting or or to benefit one another.

But in 13, he stops right there and he goes, Listen, before you even get into using these, you gotta understand the foundation of it.

Like you guys want, you know, level 505.

You don't even have 101 mastered.

And so if you don't have these things coming from a place of love, then what you're gonna do is just have weaponized spirituality.

So you see, I unfortunately I'm sure a lot of people in this room could tell stories about that where it's like people were using, you know, well, this person speaks in tongues and this person prophesies and this, whatever, and they used it as some sort of spiritual hierarchy to make themselves better than other people instead of it being what Paul describes in 14, where he's going, This is there are these laws and these rules built around love so that you're using it to benefit one another, not to put yourself in a selfish place on a higher pedestal.

Yeah, if you're using communion to flex, okay, how much more damage would you do with the ability to do miracles or a word of wisdom or a word of knowledge?

You are not ready for those things until you've mastered what love is.

Those things are designed to bring you together, and where you're at in your headspace right now, it would divide you, right?

It would do more damage.

Okay, so so let's read that same verse again with that knowledge.

He said, If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but I didn't love others, I would be nothing.

Verse three, if I gave everything I had to the poor, now he's into like really noble sacrificial stuff.

If I if I gave everything, all my money, all my possessions, uh to charity to the poor, and even sacrificed my own body, I could boast about it, but if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing.

So what he's doing here is he's raising the stakes of this conversation.

Let's forget about the Corinthians for a second, let's think about ourselves.

Essentially, what he's saying is whatever you are learning, whatever you are building, whatever you are producing, whatever you're giving, whatever you're giving yourself to, all of that's on this side of the equation.

If on the other side of the equation you don't have love, it cancels itself out.

And so he's he's raising the stakes pretty high, which should beg the question for us like, well, then what is love and how can I measure it?

And how can I know if I'm doing it well?

Because the last thing I want to do is get to the end of my life, and my whole life's work was canceled out because I didn't love and I didn't do it well.

Okay, so that's when then that's we're gonna spend the next four weeks.

And so we're gonna start with the first one.

He starts to unpack and and codify love, and he says, love is patient and kind.

I don't think there's any mistake around the fact that when he starts unpacking what love is, the first thing that he leads with is love is patient and kind.

Because I think that really impacts our understanding of what love is.

First of all, let's go to in 1 John 4.8, it says God is love.

So let's start at the very, very foundation there.

All love flows from him, God is him.

God is love.

And I think that because we don't have an understanding of that first piece of love is patient, that often it leads to us misunderstanding God.

So, for example, I know that throughout church history, and this is even in particular in my life, and I'm sure some of you could relate to this, we have gotten it wrong over and over and over again about the character of God, because we'll say that he's loving, but then we don't really believe he's patient.

Like you look at God, and I know I have felt this, and I and I've heard it said where, you know, God is uh, you know, we're we're sinners in the hands of an angry God, right?

We're we're in this place where God is just waiting to drop you into the fire, he's waiting to drop the hammer, you're always behind, it's never good enough.

You know, God is God is kind of just always irritated with me because I'm not quite getting it right.

And why keep why do I keep making the same mistake over and over again?

So, how could I possibly have an understanding of God that is true, truly understanding his love for me and who he is, if I don't see him as patient, if I don't understand that love is patient, that he has patience with me.

So go ahead.

I was gonna yeah, I was just gonna go with that because the the idea that God is love.

So ultimately everything that ends up in our relationships with each other, okay, starts with number one, God defining it, and then God giving it to us.

So I receive it from God.

God's defining love and and and I'm accepting his love, and then that spills out into my other relationships, right?

Which is first John 4.

First John 4 says, starting in verse 19, we love because he loved us first.

We love because he first loved us.

He set the tone, right?

The the the reaction starts with his action, he loved us first.

And then look at this: whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar.

For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

And he's given us this command anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Yeah, how often do we see?

Uh unfortunately, it becomes far too easy for us to go, you know, I really love God, I kind of just hate his kids.

They're just annoying to me, you know.

They are the direct image of God.

All the people around you, they are created in his image, they're a reflection, and his presence, his essence, his life and breath is in them.

So they I love that it's laid out so clearly because it's like, no, you can't say that you love God if you don't love the people around you.

I'm not saying everybody's like as easy as everybody else, right?

But you've got to learn that love.

So it flows first from my understanding of his love for me.

He first loved us.

That's it.

We love because he first loved us.

I understand him.

Now I understand how he loves me.

Now I am able to let that flow out of my life into other people and allow me to have a level of patience for them that I've experienced him having for me.

I know we got stuff to get to, but I kind of want to sit here for a minute, honestly, because I I do think like in some places and even in our own mindset, sometimes like there is this ethos around like somehow it's okay to really love God and be infatuated and in awe of God and totally frustrated and fed up with everybody else.

Like, like somehow we detach loving God and loving people, and as if they're not the same.

And and in 1 John 4, he's calling that out.

He's like, look, if you say you love, you know, you love God who you've never seen, you've never touched, like you're you're lying, and maybe you're lying to yourself.

Maybe you feel like you know you're very excited about these lofty concepts of God or the the feelings you feel when you pray, or you know, your ethereal connection to God, and yet the tangible people in front of you are always a burr in your saddle, you're always frustrated with them, you're always agitated with them, you're always listen looking down, talking down to them.

He's like, that is not like you are actually lying, and maybe you're lying to yourself.

That actually begs the question uh are you making God in your image, or or are you really loving God and and worshiping for him for who he is?

Yeah.

Because if I'm that irritated with everybody around me all the time, maybe I've just kind of crafted God in my mind to be just like me.

Yeah.

Well, you you think about you know, Galatians 5, right?

Talks about the fruit of the spirit.

In other words, it's designed to help us look at our lives and go, hey, if the spirit is in me, these things ought to be showing up, these characteristics.

And one of them is patience, right?

So essentially saying, if if if really the spirit of God is in you, working, you know, one of the things that would be coming out of you is patience.

And this is this is something, honestly, I I've really learned a lot from you in this, and and even kind of what inspired this message was when we were um working on that, um, the working on that video that we made for New Year's Eve, uh, and we're we were kind of talking about, hey, what are the areas in your faith right now that are just kind of fresh?

And you mentioned patience.

Yeah.

Yeah, it it's been a a huge revelation to me that has really opened my mind to help me understand God better and and see how he views me.

And one of the ways that that God speaks to me a lot is is through nature.

I know we've talked about that before, but but it is just this impactful thing where he starts taking things that are in scripture and showing them in concrete full form in the world that he's created.

So I have this video that I wanted you guys to see, and we can go ahead and put it up here.

Unfortunately, for copyright reasons, we can't put the sound on it, which is like my favorite part, and I really want you to hear.

I put it on my Instagram stories.

I think the church is gonna put it on theirs so you so you can hear it too.

But there are these four scientists who are in this uh this submersible called the Nautilus, and it can go down thousands of feet.

In fact, Robert Wallard, the guy that created it, is the same guy that created the submersible that could go deep enough to discover the Titanic.

And this had four scientists in it, and they're seeing this thing that we've only ever seen dead before come up in nets.

This is in 2018, they're seeing it live for the first time in history.

And I wish you could hear the audio.

I encourage you to go listen to it because these scientists are cracking up.

One guy goes, This looks like a Muppet.

You know, is that real?

Is that a fish?

And they're just laughing with delight at this thing that they're seeing for the first time.

And it hit me when I watched this God's patience that that thing is not new.

I know it was like new to us in 2018, but it's not new.

He put it back there however many thousands of years ago that he created the world, and it's been down thousands and thousands of feet deep at the bottom of the ocean this whole time.

And God had the patience to wait for us to learn how to make the wheel, learn how to discover radio waves, learn how to, you know, put together something that wouldn't be crushed by the pressure, you know, of going down that deep.

He waited until we came up with the first submersible in 1620 and went down 15 feet and then hundreds of years more until we could come up with something that could go down and find that thing so that he could watch four people laugh with joy at discovering this thing.

That's what I thought when I saw the video as well.

I connected all those dots.

But it it hit me with my understanding of his patience expanded with that because I've always had some form of an understanding of his patience with my mistakes.

Yes, his forgiveness is there.

You know, he'll forgive me for my mistakes and move forward.

But do you know how much joy and patience he has for your discovery process?

That he finds so much joy in you uncovering each new layer of who he is and each new layer of what he put in you and what you're made for.

His patience is there too.

I love, you know, even you were talking about the fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, like they're all connected because it's not just patience with where I get it wrong, but patience with my process of getting it right.

And he has such joy in it.

You you really helped me grow in this area because this is one of those kind of blind spots where um there's a di there's a uh difference between what I knew and what I believed.

So, like, for example, if someone gave me a test on like, is God patient?

I would have get the I would get the answer right.

Like, I would say yes, God is patient, but I don't feel like he is on a daily basis, right?

Like emotionally, mentally.

Like I I feel like God's a bit frustrated with me.

Uh He's waiting on me to catch up.

I feel like God's kind of like us when we're in Kroger with our kids and and and they just keep lagging behind, and all of a sudden we're on aisle four, we're like, we're the kids, and then we go back and we're like, guys, come on, pick your feet up, you know, stop lollygagging, you know.

Come on.

We're super patient.

Don't we've never done that.

But but that whole feeling that like I I honestly kind of feel that way with God generally, right?

That God is just like sort of frustrated that I'm not picking it up faster.

Why didn't you learn that quicker?

I can't believe you're still dealing with this.

I can't believe that, you know, you're come on, man, come on, you know, like he's waiting on me, okay, tapping his foot, and and to, you know, think about the fact that he created this whole universe, this ecosystem, and essentially put all these Easter eggs, right?

You know, it's like that's like a metaphor right now, right?

In the world, it's like in a movie, the director, you know, whoever wrote it, they'll hide these things and see if you can find them.

You know, but it makes me think about literally with a when with our kids when they were little, and we would do the Easter egg hunt, right?

We would hide the eggs and we like to watch them find them.

But to be honest, I would get annoyed if the last two eggs they couldn't find them.

You know what I'm saying?

Like, I wouldn't be patient.

I would go over and be like, hey, what do you what's this over here, you know, and and try to get it like because I'm just done with the egg hunt, you know, or I might like kick an egg out into the um grass, you know, just to get this thing over with.

And and it's like, you know, you think about over the years, God's put all of these discoveries, he's put all of these things in our physical world.

And at times people got close to him and didn't see him, you know, and God's up there like, oh, but he's up there with a bucket of popcorn going, Michael, Michael, Michael, they're about to find the healing.

Oh, they didn't do it.

Oh, they didn't do it.

And and but but the whole thing is like his patience.

And so if God has been patient with us, right, to to slowly discover things and not feel like he's got to force the answer on us, how much more patient is he throughout our lives, right?

And that he's not up there tapping his foot in frustration that that we're you know, we're disappointing him all the time.

Um, okay, so let's let's think this all the way through because this is obviously something that we you know we should receive from God, understand his posture toward us as patient, and then we should introduce that, right?

I should be patient with you, you should be patient with me, we should be patient with the people around us.

But let's think it all the way through because what does that mean?

Then if God is patient, does that mean that I shouldn't get out of my comfort zone?

If if God is patient, does that now a license for apathy?

Does that permission to procrastinate?

Does that mean, well, then why would I push this rock up this hill?

Why would I try hard?

Why would I, why would I push?

Okay, if if God is so patient.

And if you take that and you let, you know, and then in our our relationships, if you you being patient with me mean you never, you know, spur me on to good works?

Does it mean you never challenge me out of my comfort zone?

Like how do you justify that with verses like Proverbs 27, 17 that says, I as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.

I mean, that's just even a visual conflict of these of these blades, right?

Hitting each other and making each other sharper.

That means we're challenging each other, we're we're we're coming up against each other.

Okay, how how do we do this in a way like how do we reconcile God's patience and not at the same time fall into apathy?

I think one of the key things is understanding what patience really even is or isn't.

You you and I looked up earlier this week, and one of the synonyms for patience, or a few of them, were things like perseverance and persistence and tolerance and backbone and grit and fortitude and endurance.

And the antonyms, the things that were the opposite were things like indifference and laziness and lethargy.

So patience is not just, well, I mean, just kind of sit around and whatever happens, happens.

Patience may not happen, it means things may not happen fast, but I am consistently chipping away at this in a disciplined way, day after day after day.

God, I remember you you brought up this uh visual one time of scripture, and and it was actually showing like all the different cross-references, and and it makes you realize that never in your lifetime will you be able to read and understand the depth and complexity of the entire Bible.

God is not frustrated with you that you don't, but He wants you to keep getting in there and digging and discovering and finding new pieces day after day after day.

Patience is actually a disciplined progress.

Yeah, patience isn't uh uh being lethargic, it's not being stagnant, patience is proactive, so so it's it's a movement, it's just not frenetic, it's not frantic.

Right?

I'm I'm I'm not I'm not okay.

It's it's I know that.

Yeah, things take time.

And so it takes time with you.

Sometimes I I hear something, and even I though I can comprehend it here, it takes a while for me to be able to emotionally handle it.

Yeah, okay, to even you know, it's like the the the scripture that says that love rejoices in the truth, right?

That's that we're gonna get to that in a couple weeks, but 1 Corinthians 13 6.

So 1 Corinthians 13, 4 is where we focus today.

Love is patient and kind, but it says that love rejoices in the truth.

Well, sometimes the truth hurts.

Sometimes, even though my head can handle it, my heart can't.

And so you got to be patient with me as I'm trying to digest this, and I'm trying to untie knots, okay, in this process, which is again why Ephesians 4 15 says to speak the truth in love.

So if we're trying to sit in this tension amongst each other, right, in our human relationships, that iron would sharpen iron, which means sometimes I've got to say something to you to help you, to encourage you, or or even to challenge you, okay.

Am I doing that in a place where I'm coming from speaking the truth in love that I'm being patient and kind?

Yeah.

Patient and kind, which I think I'll I'll offer a few thoughts and I want to hear what you think, but but like I think it forces the person delivering, okay, the challenge, okay, to take some time to step back and really fight for some self-awareness and prayerfully go, how am I gonna deliver this?

Especially if I know you well enough to know what your triggers are, and and where you have an intimate enough relationship, emotionally intimate, where you know where someone's vulnerable, you know the root of you know where someone's coming from, to go, I'm gonna make sure that as I do this, I really pray my way to a good position and think my way to a good position where I'm delivering this in such a way that I'm not throwing elbows as I'm doing it, I'm not trying to get some barbs, I'm not trying to get some energy out to spite you a little bit because I'm frustrated by where you're at and I'm calling this you leveling up, but really you're just frustrating me.

Okay, yeah, this is really for you.

If you don't like the truth, then you know, whatever, people don't like the truth these days, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And yet, really, what I'm trying to do is I'm working out some of my aggression, I'm working out some of my frustration.

So I think to love you enough to search my own heart to go, where am I coming from from this?

Is this really because I'm frustrated with you or because I really believe in you, and I'm trying to help you ultimately get to the place have a breakthrough and get to a place of God's purpose for your life and for you to operate from a place of love and security and your identity in Christ and have all of the weight stripped off of you for you to be free to go towards your purpose, or am I just doing this because I'm trying to make you into my image?

So, two things that came to my mind when you were saying that.

The first one was honestly an image of when you're delivering the truth.

If you deliver the truth to me in a loving way, it's it's like I see the truth as this beautiful glass vase.

And if you hand it to me and you give it to me in this loving way, you've just given me a priceless gift.

This thing is amazing and it's beautiful.

But if you hurl it at me, you still gave me the truth, but now I'm full of shattered glass.

You you can take something that was meant to be the greatest gift, and you can end up wounding someone so deeply and leaving them with scars.

So that I think is super powerful is to for you, what you said about having the discipline and that patience, that strength of mind to go, I'm gonna check myself before I deliver to make sure that my motive and my heart is coming from the right place.

The second thing was it kind of left me with a question when you were talking about my goal is to help you get to the best version of you, the to be free from some things.

What do you what does that mean?

Like who determines what is the best version of me?

That that's a I think an an interesting and important part to explore.

Yeah, I think ultimately, I think we have to be very careful that we don't just start getting a vision for other people's lives.

Yeah, that's that's what I mean.

Yeah, ultimately, what what what I want to do is be an instrument in your life and you an instrument in mine, and helping me find my identity simply in who I am in Christ and and and forming and shaping my character and all of that.

But in terms of what I do and how I do it and what success looks like, okay, and and and what my purpose is, that's between you and God.

And that's between me and God.

And ultimately, for me to go, no, no, no, success means this.

Okay, this it's this path is a that is super reductive, and ultimately that's putting ourselves in the place of the one determining people's purpose, right?

And so we go, like, that's not my job to go around and see your talent and see how great it could be in this context.

That might not be the context God has for you, right?

So I'm gonna trust him and ultimately point you to him, not you know, start to again try to make you into the image of what I think great is.

Because we could all, I'm glad you unpacked that because we could all see something in someone else where it's like, man, this person, you know, gosh, they should be winning Grammys.

This person should be on TV.

This per their your gifting is insane, and we kind of push our vision for how it should manifest on them, but that what you're saying is that is not our place.

That's God's place alone.

Absolutely, yeah.

That's right.

All right, so so let's think about this, right?

Our whole life's work, we could speak all the languages, if we knew everything, if if if we were spiritually in tune, we knew the mysteries of heaven, if we were totally noble in what we did, right, but we didn't love others, okay, it would it would cancel out.

And so as we look at our life's work, we realize how important it is to love the people around us, and especially to order our lives in such a way that we can love properly.

What is proper love?

Okay, it starts with patience.

Starts with patience.

Paul takes them from all these lofty, oh clay, okay, shiny sort of views of a great life, and he says, Look, I'm gonna take you down to a foundational principle.

When you're immature, you are just attracted to somebody based on what car they drive, based on you know uh what how much money they have, based on a lot of the superficial, shiny things.

As you mature over life, you start to realize how important it is that somebody's still there in the morning after a fight, that somebody still stays with you even when they're frustrated with you, that somebody's patient in endurance.

In fact, it's one of the great compliments you give somebody.

He was so patient.

She's such a patient person.

Like it is, it's it doesn't, you know, it doesn't sparkle, it's not glitzy, but it is powerful.

It's a foundational thing.

So for us to be able to give love to the people around us means we're gonna have to have bandwidth to be patient, which means we have to order our lives in such a way that we have it when we need it for the people that God's put around us.

Tell you a quick story.

A few years back, uh I came home.

I was in a season of time to summarize.

I I had taken on too much, I was extremely exhausted in that season, and then I had a day that was a very exhausting day and an exhausting season.

Have you ever been there?

Okay, so I came home that day.

I was totally shot.

I had no juice.

And my my wife, uh Shaylin, was like, I said, How you doing?

How was your day?

And she starts to share with me something she was going through.

And as she was talking, I realized like I don't have it.

And so as she was talking, I started to imagine her sharing this particular issue with a female friend.

Okay, as she was saying it, I just imagined them talking and working it out.

And so I articulated that.

You know, I said, uh, you know, hey, this is really a big deal, and uh, you're totally justified in your feelings.

And I just I can imagine you and a female friend really being able to get to the bottom of this, and you could even cut out the middleman, and you guys could really, I mean, do some beautiful things with this.

And um, and she just stopped talking.

And I thought, sounds like we're in alignment, you know, really felt like, you know, that worked, and uh I felt good about it.

I was like, God, you're good, you know.

Thank you for your uh wisdom that you've given me.

And um, you know, a couple years later, we were working through some issues, we were in an argument, and uh she said, you know, two years ago, uh, you know, I don't just dump stuff on you, dude.

I'm very careful about that.

I know you bear a lot of weight, so I don't just do that like carelessly.

And this one time I did, and I bring it up, you tell me to go get a friend.

And I got defensive in the moment, frankly.

I was like, you know, I don't know what you think I am.

You know, I'm not Jesus.

You know, I don't I don't have all the power.

I'm a human, I'm giving my best.

I didn't have it.

I'm uh you know, and so we did we didn't work it out that night.

Well, a couple days later, I'm at work, somebody comes in, they start sharing a problem with me, they start bringing an issue, right?

And I'm sitting there, and I had frankly the same instinct to want to go, you know, you ought to find somebody, and you all ought to.

And I had the exact same feeling, and you know, but you know what I did though?

I I became a professional in the moment.

I squared away, and I squared away with that person, and I was patient with them, and I listened to them, and and I did everything I was supposed to do, everything I didn't do with her, I did with this person, and they walked out feeling like you know they got what they needed, and they walk out and and the door shut, and I was like, What did I do?

I was patient with the wrong person.

Now, that's no disrespect of the person because they needed what they needed, but I made vows to her.

This is my ultimate priority, and yeah, we have to have a community so robust that everybody can find the patience that they need.

But when it comes to me ordering my life, I realized I had taken on too much and that I had ordered my life in such a way that when my wife needed an expression of love that required patience and I was fresh out, I needed to reorder my life.

And that became a catalytic, life-changing moment that I changed things in my schedule, I made sacrifices in my life, I reordered my life so that I would have what she needed, what the people closest to me needed when they needed it.

Which guess what?

If you do that, it'll cost you something.

It will cost it might cost you some money, it might cost you somebody's favor, it might cost you a promotion, it might cost you something valuable to you.

But for me, whatever it costs me, I was willing to pay.

Because I don't want stuff getting canceled out on this side because I have all this over here, and yet I didn't give love to the people who are closest to me when they needed the number one first primary expression of love, which is patience.

And so I want to encourage you, order your life in such a way that you can demonstrate love with patience.

I I think you absolutely nailed it there.

You you aren't Jesus.

But by the way, can we just, for the record, that was two years later.

One of the other portions of this scripture is love keeps no record of wrongs.

I appreciate you saying that.

So I appreciate it.

I wasn't gonna say it.

You need to go ahead and own that publicly.

But it's true.

Preach, sister, preach.

I can't let you put yourself out there and just twist.

That's love right there.

But but all jokes aside, you're you're right.

I think you're not Jesus.

Give yourself the grace, you're not gonna have boundless patience.

You're gonna have to intentionally make room for it.

But that is the loving thing to do.

So let's end this way.

Three questions I want you to uh all us all to uh contemplate.

The first is this do you see God as patient?

And so maybe God brought you here today.

Maybe what today was about for you was to take what you might be able to pass on a multiple choice God test and to actually implement it into your psyche, into your consistent thinking that God's not tapping his foot in aisle four, telling you, come on, pick up the pace, you're too slow, you're too slow.

Yes, God is taking you out of your comfort zone.

Yes, uh, you know, a lot of things are uphill.

Yes, patience is proactive, but God is not frustrated with you.

Just like the universe, he's let us discover it slowly over time.

There are things that are gonna take time in your life, and God is not coming from a place of frustration, disappointment, and anger with you.

He's coming from a place of patience.

The second question is this Are you showing love through patience with the people around you?

Would be worth sort of just taking a little time with that?

Sit with that, pray with that.

Is there any changes that need to be made?

How can I demonstrate at the same time that iron's sharpening iron and I'm challenging people and all of this, that I'm challenging them from a place of love?

Okay, that I'm being patient and kind.

So, so do people in a sense feel patience or do they feel constant frustration from you?

The third is this, and this is uh something as a collective, I think we need to think about how are we doing as a community being patient with each other?

This this chapter was written to a church, and we're a church.

That means the greatest witness we have in the world is to create a beautiful community of love, which requires patience.

Sometimes I know people fall away from church, and maybe they're still watching the content online because it encourages them, but they've fallen out of relationship.

I wonder if some who have who have fallen out of relationship with brothers and sisters in Christ, I wonder if it's because you think they've run out of patience for you.

They think they you think they've run out of patience for you.

I want to encourage you.

Give us another chance.

I want to encourage our communities.

Let's be patient with each other.

Some things that come quickly to you take a long time to other people, and vice versa.

And that's part of the strength of our community.

Let's demonstrate love by demon demonstrating patience with one another.

Amen.