Longsuffering

Galatians 5:22-23

New King James Version (NKJV)

²² But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,²³ gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.

long-suf·fer·ing

adjective

1.      having or showing patience in spite of troubles, especially those caused by other people.

The fruits of the spirit are attributes that we are supposed to take on because we have the Holy Spirit in us we are capable of expressing all the fruits. However, when our flesh gets in the way, we have an extremely difficult time bearing these fruits, because it’s not our natural characteristics…at least for most of us in this world.

I have learned that there are certain fruits of the Spirit that are harder to master than others, of course this varies from person to person, such as “longsuffering”, can be an extremely hard task to master because this requires you dealing with others, whether their actions towards you, towards themselves, getting their life together so everyone around them can be at ease.

I am reminded that the Lord is longsuffering, bearing with us when we choose wrong or get distracted, or even still in the world and had not accepted Him as your Lord and Savior. So when that sibling, friend, family member, coworker or whoever is behaving contrary to what you like or what you know is right, we have to remember that they are under the same longsuffering covering with God as you are. They have to be longsuffering so you do to. They may not even be believers however we still have to be longsuffering through all their mess and issues.

 No one has mastered all of these fruits other than Jesus, so even if you struggle to be longsuffering, push through it and get back to resting the flesh that wants to lash out towards someone when they get on your nerves doing the same foolish things.