Cutting herbs, dehydrating and more...🙂He is patient

🙂2 Peter 3:9

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

1 Corinthians 13:4 tells us, “Love is patient.”

Patience is a part of love that can often be the most difficult.

It can feel more like an act of self-control, and often comes across more like a sign of weakness rather than love.

In order to understand this, we need to go back and read the previous verse (v.8), in 2 Peter 3… Because scripture teaches us a different view of patience.

8 “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. 

9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

God’s desire is for restored relationship with all his children, which leads Him to patience toward mankind.

And it is His desire to see us grow in holiness and godliness as he waits to bring about the restoration of all things to Him with the coming of the new heavens and earth.

It’s our heavenly Father’s desire to create in us a heart like His own, who has so patiently loved us.

I sense that many Christians are living day-to-day, just trying to get by until Jesus returns, and struggle with in the purposes for which Christ came.

You see, God’s desire is to use us… to bring about a saving knowledge to all those around us. His plan… His purpose… is for the restoration of relationship, not just biding our time and pushing through the drudgery of this life.

So, let’s look at what the rest of what 2 Peter chapter 3 says… 

Continuing in verse 10:

10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.

11 Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, 12 waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! 13 But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

14 Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these...

We're waiting for what? For all these things that we just read… 

Now continuing with verses 14 & 15:

[we are to be] be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace. 15 And count the patience of our Lord as salvation,

You see, because God loves us, He does not desire for us to remain as we are. His plan is to do such a work in us that we live on this earth as Jesus did.

Yet so often feel like we are spinning our wheels [so to speak] as we journey toward Christ likeness…

However, scripture teaches us that it is God, in His patience, who produces holiness and godliness. In our own strength we have no ability to change.

Our only job is to engage with, and allow Him to work in and through us.

Philippians 2:13 says, “For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” Another version reads this verse like this: “For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.” (NLT)

God’s desire isn’t for us to engage in works that have the appearance of morality but aren’t flowing from the true desire of our hearts. His longing is to mold and shape our hearts by His love into a heart that reflects His own so that we might live true lives of holiness out of the overflow of what He has done (and is doing) in us.

Only God can accomplish such a work. Only God can fill us with the ability to truly love. And as today’s verse in 2 Peter 3:9 tells us, He is patient to do so.

And He is patiently working in us to accomplish this work.