Fruit of the Spirit Pt. 2 - Week 1, Day 1

Day 1: I Want Patience, and I Want It Now
 
I am not a patient person. I'm the kind of the guy who comes up to a traffic light, and if there is a car in both lanes, I try to figure out based on the year, make, and model of the car, and the age of the driver, who will pull out the fastest.
 
I am the kind of guy who goes to the local Target, and after picking up what I came for, I will walk to the checkout lanes and count the number of people in each lane and the number of items in their shopping carts to determine which line will get me out of the store 15 seconds faster than the other.
 
Seriously, I will look at the person in the other line, and in my mind, I will start to race them. If I get out of there the fastest, I have chosen well, and if I lose, it just infuriates me. And here is God's great holy joke. I play this game every time, and I never win. Never. Some guy in front of me has an item, and it doesn't have the price on it, the computer goes down, or that red light starts flashing over the register, telling me immediately that I am hosed. The other day, I made it to a line, and there was one woman in front of me. One woman. I had it made, and then all of a sudden, I kid you not, she pulled out a flyer full of coupons and a pair of scissors, and she started cutting out the coupons she used at the register. Who does that kind of thing?
 
I am the kind of guy who walks into an elevator and immediately looks for the "door close" button. And I won't push it once. I will push it over and over again.
 
I've got to be honest. I want patience, and I want it right now. I need to be more like the little boy in the department store. He was at the end of an escalator watching the railings as it went around. A salesman came by and asked the boy, "Are you lost?" He said, "No. I'm just waiting for my chewing gum to come back again."
 
I need to be like that little boy, but I'm more like the five-year-old boy who was riding in a car with his mom to his grandmother's house. There wasn't much to do inside that car, so every few minutes, the little guy would ask his mom, "Are we there yet?" "Are we there yet?" Over and over again, he would ask, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" It finally got to the point where the mom just couldn't take it anymore. She turned to her son and said, "No, we aren't there yet. We have another hour and a half to go, so stop asking, "Are we there yet?" The little boy sat there looking out the window for about 5 minutes, and then he turned to his mom and said, "Mom, will I still be 5 when we get there?"
 
I bet most of us struggle every day with being patient. Ed Young says there are three different areas where people get impatient the most. We get impatient with…
 
 
INTERRUPTIONS

Don't you love it when you have your day all laid out, and some crisis happens? Your friend is having a meltdown, the teacher piles on the homework, the coach wants you to stay after practice to work on some drills. You finally get to the end of your day, and nothing worked out the way you had it planned.
 
INCONVENIENCES
 
The doctor made you wait, they were sold out of what you wanted, and you got mad. Your friend didn't respond the way you thought they should have responded. It's hard to be patient when things don't work out the way they were supposed to.
 
IRRITABLE PEOPLE
 
It's the waiter who doesn't want to wait on your table or refill your glass of water. It's the lady at the convenience store who doesn't know how to make change. It's the child who keeps asking the same questions over and over again.
 
A man couldn't find his luggage at the airport baggage area, so he went to the lost luggage office and told the woman there that his bags never showed up. She smiled and told him not to worry because they were trained professionals and he was in good hands. "Now," she asked, "has your plane arrived yet?"
 
How many times have you looked at somebody and thought,
 
"She's a few peas short of a casserole.
 
His antenna doesn't pick up all the channels.
 
His belt doesn't go through all the loops."
 
Did you notice what all three different areas that make us impatient have in common? They all start with the letter "I" because impatience is an "I" problem. We get impatient because it's all about us.
 
"I wanted it to be this way."
 
"I wanted this to happen."
 
"They didn't do what I wanted them to do."
 
Selfishness, arrogance, and pride will destroy every relationship you and I have ever had. The interesting thing is, when you look at the life of Jesus, it was never about what He wanted; it was all about what God wanted for His life.
 
The most patient man to ever live was Jesus. He was patient with people, patient in every circumstance, patient every moment of every day. This week, we are going to try to get some patience.
 
When a person asks Jesus to come into their life, the Holy Spirit begins to produce these things called the Fruit of the Spirit inside the Christian life. God wants us to be full of love, peace, patience, kindness, and gentleness. Why is that? Because God is full of love, joy, peace, patience, and kindness, and He wants us to reflect Him well. Make sure you do the time-out section because we have to become patient, and I mean right now.
 
Time Out:
 
1. Name three ways this past week you were impatient.

 
2. Why do you think you get impatient in life?

 
3. What happens when you get impatient? What is it that you do?

 
4. Look up Matthew 26:36-46 and answer the following questions.
 
A. Jesus asks His disciples to pray for Him in the Garden of Gethsemane. In just a few hours, Jesus will die on a cross for our sin. When Jesus finds the disciples asleep, what does He do?

B. Does He call them names? Does He tell them what losers they are?

 
5. Look at verse 41. Jesus is what to the disciples? (Hint: He is understanding, isn't He? He says, "the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.") What do you think that means?

 
6. Do you think people around you really want to irritate you? What if you were patient and understanding? How could that change things?

 
When we become Christians, the Holy Spirit takes up residence inside of us and begins to develop attributes within us that help us become more like God. The more we allow the Spirit of God to control our lives, the more we surrender to God, the more patient we will be.