WHICH “FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT”
IS A DIAMOND?
An amazing thing happened
this week that proved to me that through faith and quoting a particular scripture,
one of the Fruit of the Spirit mentioned in Galatians 5:22 had fully developed
and we didn’t even know it.
This past Wednesday I woke
up in a sweat. I checked the thermostat and it was over 80 degrees at 4 a.m.! The
temperatures have been 109 degrees to 113 degrees during the day so we had to
get this fixed as soon as possible. I had to be at work and my roommate Jane
had an appointment at 1:00 p.m. and we had to think about the cat and the dog
and call the insurance people who would call the air conditioning company and
we also needed to figure out a place to stay until it could be fixed—lots of
arranging to do and chock full of pressure.
We actually handled it
well, one thing at a time. Jane took me to work, called the insurance, went
back to check on the animals, called me, and was able to make her 1 o’clock appointment.
The air conditioning guys couldn’t make it out until Friday, so the next two
days were a whirlwind of driving me to work, driving back to check on the
animals, getting our stuff to the motel and checked in, back again to check on
the animals, getting a ride after work to the motel. And in the middle of this,
we had a quick rainstorm and a flash flood.
But with all the tension
and stress of the situation we didn’t even argue one time. When the anxiety
mounted up, we shut up, and didn’t let it out of our mouths. We just kept our
trust in the Lord that all would be well, the air conditioning would be an easy
fix, the animals would be fine and everything would be okay. And it was.
Galatians 5:22 tells us “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith.” We received some of that “longsuffering”
fruit. The Greek word for “longsuffering” means “patient enduring.”
Vine’s Expository
Dictionary of New Testament Words says: “Patience only grows in trial.” In other
words, patience is only developed under pressure, so we don’t even know we have
it until we’re put to the test.
Lots of times we don’t really see what the Spirit is doing to change our
lives and we even may wonder if anything is really happening. I know that since
the beginning of the year, Jane and I have had several opportunities to be
stressed. We were both very aware of the reason: I started working on publishing
my second WINGS book. The adversary hit me with just about everything he could
to get me to quit. But with Jane’s help and the help of friends like you, I didn’t
give up.
Every day on the way to work I would say Philippians 4:6 and 7 along
with the other scriptures we quote. It says: “Be careful [anxious] for nothing; but in
everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be
made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all
understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
Then when this incident with the air conditioning happened and we
were put under even more pressure, we just kept the faith and trusted in the
Lord all the way through. We even got a mini miracle: The air conditioning guys
were scheduled to come late Friday afternoon, but they had a cancellation so
they were able to come at 9 a.m.
When the whole incident was over, we discovered that in this
experience, the fruit had become fully ripe. I can honestly say, it’s as if the
whole thing never happened.
We talked this morning about what could have happened if we had
let the stress get to us: we could have argued about things, which would have
brought about emotional strife, which would have remained and would have needed
to be handled after the incident of the air conditioning was long over.
So many other negative things could have happened and lingered
beyond the actual incident, but because that fruit of patience (longsuffering)
was already developed, when the incident was over, the stress just fell off like
a scab and had no more effect on us at all – like it never even happened.
It's not great, humanly, that patience (longsuffering) only gets
developed under pressure. It’s just NOT fun, but once you’ve been through it,
it’s amazing and thrilling and a great joy to know you really have it.
Like Jane reminded me this morning, a diamond is formed only under
pressure. And we’ve found that true forbearance (patience) is a very precious
diamond to own.
Love, Carolyn
WINGS 2:
JOURNEY WITH JESUS is available now
on Amazon Kindle. Paperback coming soon.
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