As I look back on my life, especially at my fails, there’s one sin that most of these fails all have in common—impatience. A lot of us can say the same thing, can’t we? Impatience gets us into so much trouble.
Do you want to strengthen and grow your puny patience muscle? I do. How can we do that? Let’s turn to Genesis 16:1-6.
IMPATIENCE SEPARATES FROM GOD
Impatience is essentially saying to God. You’re going too slow for my liking. Let me help you speed things up. That’s what happened with Abram and Sarai in verses 1-3.
- Abram and Sarai ran out of patience
- Abram and Sarai ran into sin
When we start speeding, we also start sinning.
But impatience not only breaks up our relationship with God, it also breaks up our relationship with others.
IMPATIENCE SEPARATES OUR FAMILIES
Look at the division that entered this family when impatience entered this family.
- Hagar v Sarai (4)
- Sarai v Hagar (5a)
- Sarai v Abram (5b)
- Abram v Hagar (6)
Impatience is weakness and weakens relationships, patience is strength and strengthens relationships.
LIVING THE BIBLE
That was a painful workout wasn’t it. Now, as with all hard workouts, we’ve got to let the muscles repair and rebuild. We can do so by remembering God’s patience: with the world, with his disciples, and with ourselves. Let God’s patience soothe you, slow you, and strengthen you.
Build your patience muscle by remembering the damaging weakness of impatience and the constructive strength of God’s patience.
This episode of Living the Bible lines up with Expedition 4: Day 3 in Exploring the Bible Together: A 52 Week Family Worship Plan and Exploring the Bible: A Bible Reading Plan for Kids. You can catch up with previous episodes of the Living the Bible podcast here or subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcast.