Jen’s Gem: Good things come to those who wait.

I recently got a stain on one of my favorite dresses. Thankfully, it is machine washable so I did what any normal person would do. Grabbed my bottle of stain remover and popped the dress in the washing machine – cold water, delicate. I fully expected it to emerge like brand new.

That would be a no. The stain did not budge. Convinced that I’d ruined my dress, I asked my sister what to do. “Rinse and repeat” was what she advised me to do, with one caveat. Re-apply the stain remover, wait thirty minutes, and wash it again.

I followed her sage laundry advice and voila! The stain is gone. All I had to do was wait – wait for the “whatever is in that stain remover stuff” to do its thing.

Wait. Somewhat of a four-letter word for those of us whose patience muscles need to join the local gym.  As Mr. Tom Petty would say, “Waiting is the hardest part.” Yet, if there’s one word that accurately describes what we do for most of our lives, it’s waiting.

We wait in line at the store. We wait on hold with customer service. We wait our turn at the doctor’s office. We wait in traffic. There’s really not one area of our lives that doesn’t involve waiting. We even have to wait to be born! 

Many times you hear people saying, “I just don’t have any patience.” Yet, this is actually not true. Each of us is given a measure – a seed – of patience, along with several other seeds as it says in Galatians:

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23 NKJV)

While we all know people who exude some of these, no human is great at all of them. Our time here is to be spent cultivating these fruits. How do we do this? It’s fairly simple actually. We get a personal trainer.  

You may be thinking that you can’t afford this one-on-one attention. However, I know someone who won’t charge you a penny and he’s an expert in all of these fruits. 

It’s Jesus.

“Well of course He excels at these. He’s God!” Correct, He is. But remember, while He was on earth, He was a man – a human being who had to face all of the same trials (and much worse, mind you) as we do. He had to “deal with difficult people” like we do. In fact, He could write a book about it! (Oh, wait, He did!)

So, how do we build up these muscles? How do you build up any muscle? You work it out every day. How do you know the best way to do this? You read the instruction manual (the Bible) and follow the example and guidance of your Personal Trainer (Jesus).

There are a boatload of examples of Jesus exhibiting these character traits. Here’s a few:

Kindness – when the woman caught in adultery was about to be stoned, Jesus showed her mercy and saved her life. (John 8: 1-11 NKJV)

Self-control – when Jesus was accused of crimes He did not commit and beaten within an inch of His life, He did not say a word. (Matthew 27:14 NKJV)

Patience – when, after having spent three plus years with His apostles teaching them and many  were still clueless about who He was. (Matthew 16:13-18 NKJV)

If we are looking for our lives to be fruitful, then we have to give serious consideration to developing these muscles. Every day, we will have an opportunity to test their strength. My son’s bulging biceps didn’t come after one pull up or one visit to the gym. Every day he does something. 

This is the same discipline we must exercise if we want to be kinder, gentler, and more patient. When a trial is before you, let the first question to pop into your head be: “What would Jesus do?”

If you don’t know what He would do, open up His instruction manual. Ask God to help you. Be patient with yourself. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Muscles don’t appear overnight. Therefore, our character flaws, our stains, take time to come out. 

But guess what? God can’t wait to help you “Shout it out!”