What is Longsuffering? • Forbearance, patience
• Patient endurance and steadfastness under provocation
• Forbearance under ill-will, with no thought of retaliation
• Patience, endurance, steadfastness and forbearance
• Forbearance under suffering and endurance in the face of adversity
• Ability to endure persecution and ill-treatment
What is Patience? Patience is the state of endurance under difficult circumstances, which can mean persevering in the face of delay or provocation without acting on annoyance/anger in a negative way; or exhibiting forbearance when under strain, especially when faced with longer-term difficulties. It is also used to refer to the character trait of being steadfast. Antonyms include hastiness and impetuousness.
And patience is another sorely needed quality in the fast paced world in which we live in today. Just watch people standing in line at the grocery store or at your local fast food restaurant and watch how short some people's fuses are today. Road rage is still a problem on some of our highways. Look at someone the wrong way and they will want to try and take your head off. Many people have been killed or seriously injured because someone lost his temper over something that was very trivial.
He he he, we don’t want to wait. Look at our lives. Everything is instant: microwave everything. It will only take you 2 minutes. Put it in the microwave. We no longer want to grow anything, see it growing gradually. We just want it ready. We don’t have time to wait. Tjo !!!
A patient person is mild, gentle, and constant in all circumstances.
The real test of patience is not in the waiting but in how one behaves while waiting.
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But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing” (James 1:4, NKJV). Reaching this point in one’s life takes practice, takes God’s grace, and takes a willingness to put aside self and to surrender to the prompt¬ing of the Holy Spirit. The good news is that if we learn patience, we are in a position to receive many other blessings from God, as well.
The church is made up of a mixture of people from various back¬grounds and cultures. It also includes people who are on different rungs of the maturity ladder. Patience is necessary to be able to get along where there are so many differences. It is a temptation for those who are mature to be impatient toward those less so. In spite of the fact that it took years for them to arrive at their present level of knowledge, often the mature are unwilling to give the immature the same amount of time and study to reach their level of knowledge and understanding.
Patience in the church is one thing. But what about patience at home? What are some of the things that make us impatient with other members of our family? How long should we pray for family mem¬bers who are out of the faith? Have you ever known anyone who had to pray for a loved one for many years before the person gave his or her heart to the Lord? What are practical ways in which we can learn to cultivate patience with family members? Why is death to self so important here too?
Also, if we can be patient at home, with those who are always “in our face,” then we likely will be patient with others, as well
Think about how patient the Lord has been with you. How does keeping that reality constantly before you help you learn to show patience with others? If the Lord treated you as you treated others, what do you think would be your fate?
“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various tri¬als, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing” (James 1:2–4, NKJV). The devil tries us or tempts us to do evil. The tests and trials that God allows to come into our lives are for the purpose of developing our characters.
“The trials of life are God’s workmen, to remove the impurities and roughness from our character. Their hewing, squaring, and chiseling, their burnishing and polishing, is a painful process; it is hard to be pressed down to the grinding wheel. But the stone is brought forth prepared to fill its place in the heavenly temple. Upon no useless material does the Master bestow such careful, thorough work. Only His precious stones are polished after the similitude of a palace.”—Ellen G. White, Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, p. 10.
This doesn’t mean, however, that every trial is in God’s providence. Often we bring suffering upon ourselves through disobedience; often, too, trials and suffering are just the results of what it means to live in a fallen, sinful world where we have an enemy who hates us (1 Pet. 5:8). What this does mean, however, is that through a complete sur¬render of ourselves to the Lord, to grasping hold of Him in faith and obedience, no matter what we go through, we can come out better or more refined if we allow God to work in us.
No one said it will be fun. Life here often isn’t fun, but we are given this wonderful promise:
“Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6).
One of the ways of our God is that He is a very patient and longsuffering God. His ways are not our ways. And one of the things you will find out very early on about His ways is that He works on a much slower time frame than we do. And unless you learn to adjust to His slower way of working things out - you will find yourself easily losing your patience with Him and how He wants to work things out in your life.
God operates on a much longer and slower time frame than we are used to operating in the fast paced world in which we live in. You will really have to work with the Holy Spirit on this particular quality to get it properly worked up into your soul. The reason for this is that your own impatience will start to act up and try to override the patience and longsuffering that the Holy Spirit will try and transmit to you. At times, it may become of battle of wills - your will against His will.
But once the Holy Spirit starts to try and manifest this quality up into your personality, then you have to try and move with it and allow it to get worked into your mind and emotions. If you do, then His patience will start to override your impatience, and before you know it, your fuses will start to lengthen and you won't lose your patience like you used to do.
Reference: Discipleship Tools, Wikipedia, Bible Knowledge, Adult Bible Study Lesson 2010 1st Quarter – Fruits of the Spirit, Ellen G White