God Bless You People of God,
This weeks journey includes fasting. We will be fasting from 8AM to 6PM. We will be fasting from food. You are welcome to drink water and juice. You are welcome to participate. Fasting is an opportunity to draw all our strength from God by sacrificing our food. If this creates health dilemmas for you please fast appropriate to your dietary or medical needs.Otherwise, Lets fast and seek wisdom.
Reminder: Read Proverb 14 and fast from 8am-6pm.
Focus text:
29 A patient man has great understanding,
but a quick-tempered man displays folly.
Reflection: It is wise to be patient. That is to not be anxious. Impatience breeds bad decisions. It provokes us to take control in situations that are out of our control. It makes us use secular logic to solve spiritual dilemmas. It tempts us to forget that God is the one who is in control. That is why our focus text ascribes great understanding to the person who has patience. A patient person understands that getting angry only further frustrates the situation. Quick-tempers make assumptions instead of asking questions. Quick-tempers also neglect the power of listening. Sometimes we are quick-tempered in situations that we misinterpreted. Have you ever responded too quick to a seemingly disrespectful comment? Have you ever been upset because you only heard part of the conversation only to find out that the conversation had nothing to do with you? Be patient people of God that God might have the opportunity to show you the whole picture.
Wisdom nugget: Patience is directly tied to wisdom. The more patience, the more wisdom.
Be Blessed
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I definitely agree with you here. Patience is definitely something that I have to work on personally. As you know we live in a very fast-paced world that tells us to get what we want, when we want it. And I have fallen victim to that way of thought especially when it comes to love lol and among other things. So one of my goals this week is to work on patience in my life. Bye bye :)
ReplyDeleteA patient man has great understanding. I see this week as trying our patience with food. I know that I get really anxious when I am around certain delicacy ( cheesecake, candy, enchiladas... yum!) But with our fasting its a time to dwell on our spiritual foods. I wake up forgetting already the grace of God, but don't let me miss a meal! I pray that this week the Lord will bless me with the patience to truly understand his grace every hour of our fasting.
ReplyDeletePatience is very hard to come by nowadays, especially in an inpatient world. With all this technology making information, communication etc available with in seconds. This spoils us, in that we don't want to wait for things and desire everything in the here and now. Think about it, we send text messages, email, instant messages ans expect immediate response. Often time getting that quick response is really what we don't want to hear but because we were inpatient we got what we deserve. As suggested in verse 14:7 we need to be careful of who we talk to because we will not find knowledge with the foolish, we will know find knowledge in being inpatient.
ReplyDeleteThink about this... if God was not patient with us... how many of us would be in big trouble? We can't ask for God to be patient with us if we are not willing to be patient with Him, ourselves, others and just in general.
Something to try:
When our patiences is being tried and we find ourselves in a situation where we want to react fast and not be patient.... think, if God made that split decision to no longer be patient with us what would we do?!