The Holy Spirit’s Fourth Gift is Patience
The Holy Spirit’s fourth gift is patience. He gives it perfectly, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to use. There are times we ignore it, when we focus on the situations we interpret as causing us suffering instead. Once that focus has set in, the devil has us set-up to grumble at the people who aren’t fixing the situation to our satisfaction. From grumbling at people, we dare to grumble at God. Talk about delighting the devil.…
The Holy Spirit’s fourth gift is patience. Webster defines it as: the capacity, habit, or fact of being patient.
Expanding on that, Webster’s definition of patient looks like this: 1. bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint, 2. manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain, 3. not hasty or impetuous, 4. steadfast despite opposition, difficulty, or adversity, 5a. able or willing to bear.
Patience is connected to the first gift, Love, because love brings us into relationship with people. People with whom we will eventually need to be patient. Joy’s connection to patience is slightly different. Joy frequently shows up after we’ve been patient.

I think the strongest link in this chain of gifts is the one between Peace and Patience. As you’ve come to expect by now, I don’t mean mere absence of conflict. Anyone is capable of patience when things are calm. I mean Peace as the surety that God is in control.

The Holy Spirit’s fourth gift is patience. How do we use it?

In the first paragraph of this blog post, I used the words the situations we interpret as causing us suffering deliberately. There were years at the turn of the century when I was housekeeper and caregiver for my parents, whose health was slowly failing. To any outsider seeing their house and possessions, it would be easy to assume life was pleasant.
However, my mother’s diabetes was becoming increasingly brittle and complicated. She also had multiple types of arthritis. She didn’t sleep well, and this eventually expressed itself in criticism.
My father was showing progressing symptoms of a Parkinson’s-like disease that the medications didn’t seem to help.
I began to interpret the circumstances as ones causing me suffering, and my attitude increasingly mirrored my mother’s. Honoring my father and mother got hard. I’m not sure whether it was Wisdom, Self-Control, or mere human self-preservation, but I did manage not to mouth off at my mother during her tirades.
If I had focused on God’s control of life’s events, what patience I managed to employ might have had a positive effect. Don’t make my mistake. Keep your patience based on the deepest meaning of Peace.
The Holy Spirit’s fourth gift is Patience. Use it to frustrate the devil.

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If you’ve ever been curious about Heidi’s fiction, there are links to short stories and an anthology on this page.

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