This summer, we are reviewing The Love Project, a church-wide initiative designed to learn together how to show love better to the community around us and to each other. This 10 week study is a key way for us to connect meaningfully with people around us, and make a lifelong impact in our community! Hi, this is Dorette Schaal with an encouraging word for your day. We are preparing for the one another project as a church body this fall, and this study serves as a great reminder that loving others is the greatest way to live. Together we can make love a way of life, and positively change our world. This week is all about patience. Here is your dailyeword.
This week we will be looking at patience as one of the key characteristics of a loving person. We are using as our text the book, Love as a Way of Life, by Gary Chapman, and I love his definition of patience. He defines it this way, patience is accepting the imperfections of others. Probably one of the biggest examples of where everyone can use more patience is in traffic. Frustration and aggravation happens more in traffic than we can even imagine. Whenever anything stops up the normal flow, people in cars get impatient. So to add to Gary’s definition, I would say, patience is accepting imperfections not just in people, but in all of life. Things don’t go perfectly all the time. Situations don’t turn our perfectly. People don’t respond perfectly, or act perfectly in each endeavor. So we get to choose to walk in love and respond patiently, even in the midst of imperfection in life. If we get impatient with inanimate objects, is it any surprise that we are impatient and act unbecomingly toward people? So how do you rate on the patience scale? Let’s say 1 is the worst and 10 is the best. It may be hard to admit, but many of us, are at the bottom end of the patience scale. If you are one who consistently gets impatient, don’t be disheartened. Everyone is a work in progress, including you! Of the seven areas we are looking at in the LOVE PROJECT, I do think this might be one of the most challenging. It may be because we like instant gratification, and being patient takes patience!. As we study patience this week, I believe that you are becoming more like our creator, who has been more than patient with us all!
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