Love Is... Patient, Part 1.2

Visionary Family with Dr. Rob Rienow

Hi, my name is Laynie Rienow. Thanks for listening to the "Visionary Family Ministries" podcast. You are about to listen to a message from my dad, Dr. Rob Rienow from his teaching series "Love Is." We hope that this study through first 1 Corinthians 13 will help you discover how much God loves you and help you grow in your love for God and to others.
Now let me tell you another area where I have a lot of struggle and being patient with God and that is His tardiness in sanctifying those around me. I have, you know, I have a front row seat to a lot of people. You know, at home, I've got my wife and seven children and they're all sinners. It makes life very difficult for me to be in this house with eight sinful people and you know, technically there's nine sinners with me as sinner in chief, but I prefer to focus on their problems. Amen? Amen. You see, whenever you get two people who sin in a relationship together, person who sins plus person who sins, it equals what? Sin. Yeah, so let's stop being shocked when people sin.
You know, as a parent, this dawned on me, I tell my kids, I look my children in the eye and I tell them with a whole loving heart, I'd say this to them, I say, "I don't expect you to be perfect." I say that to my kids. Isn't that a wonderful thing for a father to say, I don't expect you to be perfect, but you know what recently dawned on me, I do and you know why I learned this about myself is because when my kids make mistakes, I'm shocked. I can't believe you did that! Couple of years ago, Rush, I showed you his picture before, he's two years old. He's in the grocery store and he's walking down the grocery store aisle and he's systematically knocking products off the shelf and Amy's there with Rush and my older daughter and Amy says to Rush, "we don't do that. No we don't." And my daughter says, well apparently we do. Listen, if you want to get rid of people's problems in your life, just stop hanging out with people. That's the only, that's the only real solution.
Now listen, it's right and it's good to pray for God to work in the hearts of the people around you. It's right and it's good to pray for that friend or that family member who's struggling with anger and temper. It's good to pray for the people in your life that are struggling with bondage and addictions. It's good to pray for that, dear brother or dear sister in the Lord who's just driving you nuts and to ask to work in their life, but here's the deal, we get impatient with God because He's not cleaning up people according to our schedule and one of the vital truths that we have to preach to ourselves when that happens is that this person is not our project. Hear me, we are not sanctifying the people around us by our Holy Spirit. God is sanctifying the believers around us through His Holy Spirit, okay? God is love, that means He's patient with us. We are called to love God, that means we need to be patient with Him, but God also says to love one another.
Let's talk about God calling us to be patient with others. Now, I already told you that patience is not a strong suit for me, but we've got a group in the room right now that God has sprinkled extra patience on and that's all the moms and grandmas. If God gives you a baby, He gives you an extra sprinkle of patience so that you survive. Can we just applaud the moms and grandmas for their patience with us?Now we face patience challenges throughout our day. We're running late, maybe to church this morning, some guy in front of us is driving 10 miles. No, they're driving the speed limit and they got a fish, a Christian fish, on the back of their car. I'm like, "I love Jesus too, push the pedal on the right!"
Now here's something I learned about myself in spending hours on three words, love is patient, getting ready for this morning. Just because I can hide my unloving impatience doesn't mean I didn't break God's command to love, let me say that again, just cause I can hide my unloving impatience doesn't mean I didn't break God's command to love. I was in Panera the other day with a couple of my kids. I'm in the checkout line, person says, "can I help you?" I'm like, "yeah, I need two croissants, two muffins and a large coffee." Two croi-ssants, two mu-ffuns, large co-ffee. I'm like, is coffee really two buttons? Is it co-ffee or is it just one button? And we get done, "can I read your order back to you, sir?" No, you have got it. I trust your work first time implicitly. You were very, very deliberate with that, thank you. No, I was calm and cool, I was like the model of politeness and I get our stuff and out the door and I'm walking out the door of the restaurant, I say to my kids, "that was unbelievable. Did you see that?" Now look, let's just say that my veneer of politeness fooled the person behind the register. Let's just say they weren't offended and didn't sense my impatience. Well, I certainly didn't fool my kids and I certainly didn't fool God. Love is patient, not love looks patient. It's actually a heart commandment. It's not just an action, it's a heart command. And to that I say, "Lord, forgive me and Lord help me."
One of the key action steps, and we'll pray about this in just a few minutes, is to ask God to change our hearts. God, give me a heart of love for the people that are around me, beginning with the people that I live with. You've got to give me a heart of patience cause, I don't know about you, it's not naturally built in here and I think about this too with my relationship with Amy. My sinful, unloving impatience comes out in our marriage relationship and ends up damaging our relationship. So Amy's talking to me about something and as soon as I think I know what she's trying to say, that's my cue to start talking. Even if she's still talking,
"I got it, dadadada." And if she decides to continue to keep talking, that's my cue to take out my phone and go onto "yeah, uh huh, yeah, uh huh, uh huh yeah" mode with her until she's done. Amy had to say to me, this was a few months ago, she said, "Rob, I'd like to talk to you about something and I'd like to ask you to not interrupt me." I'm like, "honey, you don't have to like ask me not to interrupt you. I mean, of course I'm not going to interrupt you. I love you, you're my wife. You can talk about whatever you want. I'll just give you my full undivided attention." Okay, so she starts talking and thirty seconds into what she's talking about, I'm feeling, and it dawned on me, she had to ask me not to interrupt her because apparently I interrupt her. That's that spirit of of impatience. It's a lack of love in my heart, which I need to ask God to change. All right?
Kids, teenagers sit up a little straighter. Give me your attention right now. Give me your eyeballs. Let me talk to you for a minute. How many of you kids or teenagers have ever experienced a mother or a father or a grandmother or grandfather being patient with you. Have you ever had a mom or dad, grandma and grandpa, be patient with you before? I bet you have. You know when your parents are patient with you, it's a way they're showing they love you. When they're helping you with the homework problem that you just can't seem to get, when they're waiting outside school or church for the event that you're in, which is going long, it's a way they're showing you that they love you. Trying to talk to you about the same thing for the 10th time or the 20th time.
That's a parent being patient and loving. Now, my challenge for you kids and you teenagers, God wants you to love your parents. That means God wants you to be patient with your parents. He wants you to be patient with your mom, patient with your dad, with your grandma, with your grandpa, so it's not, "hey mom, mom, hey, hey, hey, mom, mom, mom." Maybe it's just one, "hey mom, can I ask you something" and then wait patiently for mom to finish her conversation or phone call or whatever it might be because that's the way you can show love to your parents, by being patient with them. Or maybe you are a child on the other end of the age spectrum. Maybe you are now caring for aging parents or caring for aging grandparents. How can you show love to older parents? By being, starts with a P, patient with them. So you've got to ask God for that heart. Oh, I just saw some people elbow. I just saw some grandparents say, "hey, listen to the kid. That's really good stuff. Be patient with the old man." It's a prayer from us to God saying, God, give me a patient heart toward my father. Give me a patient heart toward my mother.
A lot more we can talk about here, but as we conclude, I want to turn our attention back to the vertical, back to our relationship with God. Maybe you're here or you're watching online and you're not a Christian. Somebody dragged you here. Sometimes on mother's day we get extra church guests because a mother says, "just this once, please come to church with your dear mother" and you were loving enough to say yes to your mom and being in church today. Some people are here, you know, and you're just putting your toe in the water. You're looking for something else in life, trying to fill a hole or meet a need or find some meaning and got desperate enough to go to church.
Well, I'm really glad you're here and I want you to know this message from this portion of Scripture today is that God loves you and one of the ways He demonstrates His love to you is by being patient with you. You may have heard of the apostle Paul, the apostle Paul, he hated Christians, hated Christianity. It was his job to hunt down Christians, imprison them, supervise their executions. Paul wrote this in 1 Timothy chapter one, verse 15, he said, "the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost, but I received mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display His perfect patience as an example to those who are to believe in Him for eternal life." And maybe this isn't you today, but there's a lot of people out there that they are just shaking their fist at God. God, I can't believe, if You're there, I can't believe You did this, I can't believe You did that. There's so many people with internal and external hatred for God, hatred for the church, hatred for His Book. Why doesn't God just snuff them out? Why doesn't God bring righteous judgment against them? What's He waiting for? Well, God is love and therefore God is patient. The Bible says He's long suffering. What does that mean? He puts up with stuff for a really, really long time. Why? Because He wants you to repent. He wants you to humble yourself before Him. He wants you to stop trusting in yourself and trust in Christ to save you and there is some urgency to this. I don't want you to walk away saying, "oh boy, that's good news, God's patient and so I'm just going to keep on trucking and not worry about this stuff." God is patient. God is long suffering, but His patients is not endless. Hebrews 9:27 says, "it's appointed for man once to die and then to face judgment." Right now, it may be that the Holy Spirit is working in your heart, drawing you to God, giving you a spirit of repentance and faith and today's the day you stop running and receive the love of God expressed to you through Christ.
I'd like to wrap up our service with a time of prayer, so if you would bow your heads, close your eyes with me, I'd like to lead us in a few repeat after me prayers. Now you should only pray this if you want to, but the first prayer is this, "God, thank you for being patient with me." If you want to pray that to God, whisper it to Him right now, "God, thank you for being patient with me." The next prayer, "God, help me love You more and be patient with You." Whisper that prayer if it's the desire of your heart, "God, help me love You more and be patient with You." Third prayer, "God, help me love and be patient with the people around me. God, help me love and be patient with the people around me." Take a moment and talk to God right now in your heart. You may be the one this morning that God worked in your heart this morning and He gave you the calling of repentance and faith. Just tell Him that, say, "God, I'm done running. Thank You for being so patient with me. I want to trust Christ today." For others of you, maybe there's someone in your life that it's just extra hard to be patient with. Would you specifically pray and ask God to give you His heart toward that person right now?
God, I thank You for Your patience. Help us to love You and be patient with You, especially when we're in those seasons of our life where we're just wondering where You are and what You're doing. Wondering even if maybe You've forgotten about us. Help us Lord, to judge You not by the middle of the story, but by the end and Your promises that are sure and then God, we need You to do some big time work in our hearts to have a heart of patience for the people around us and I want to ask that You would do that heart work in each one of us today and I pray this in the Name of Jesus, amen.
We hope that this message on love has encouraged you. You can find more resources for your family at our website, www.visionaryfam.com. This podcast was brought to you free of charge because of financial support from listeners like you. You can help us reach more families around the world. Please visit visionaryfam.com/donate to make a tax deductible gift. God bless you.