Patience

Today I was reading in James and James 1:4 really stuck out to me. It says…

“But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”

I know I have dealt with the issue of impatience. I want things to happen right when I want them to happen. Some of us have given up on things because we just got tired of waiting! But look what the verse says when I looked up the original definitions of the Words…

But let cheerful endurance have her complete work, that you may be complete and whole, lacking nothing without delay.

Wow! Doesn’t that just hit you in a new way? What really struck me at first was that patience means cheerful endurance. How many of us can say that when we are waiting on something that we are really enduring the wait cheerfully? Probably not many of us can say we do. Yikes, it’s time to change our thinking regarding patience isn’t it? To me this passage is now saying that when we get to that place of cheerful endurance that patience can work in us and then we may be complete and whole, and we will receive those things we desire without delay. Isn’t that awesome that we can start to receive those things without delay, but only if we let ourselves have an attitude of cheerful endurance. So the next time you are waiting on something do it cheerfully, and let that thing work in you! God bless!!

Tracy Willey