It Takes Practice
In my quiet time today I came across this scripture…”By patience possess your souls.” The Passion translation says it like this, “And by standing firm with patient endurance you will find your souls deliverance.” This scripture is saying so much…lets dig into it.
By patience… The definition of patience is to accept or tolerate delay, trouble or suffering without getting angry or upset. Even tempered, bearing provocation, annoyance or pain without complaint. Ummm you may be asking, is this even possible? Do you know the people I deal with? Do you know how much I worry? I can just hear those thoughts running through some of your minds!
Possess you souls…the definition of possess is to seize or take control of, to dominate, to own, to gain power over; over what? Our soul. The soul is our mind, our will and our emotions. This scripture is a promise to us. We have all done it, lost our cool when something unexpected comes up that we don’t like or a person comes along that gets on our very last nerve. We can immediately feel our emotions come to the surface and want to come out of our mouths in long streams of curse words or rants about how we should not have to be going through this (because it’s all about me right?)
This is when God is saying to us, hey, if you choose to respond with patience that patience will cause your emotions to come under the control of my Spirit and you will then possess or take control of your soul, your mind will and emotions in this situation. We will find deliverance from our own soul. Believe me this is a much better response than the afore mentioned display of racing emotions and ugly words.
So you may ask, how in the ever-loving world are we supposed to accomplish that? Just like in the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke 10, the Priest and the Levite most likely felt something (had an emotional response) maybe it was fear, but they allowed their feelings to dominate their actions. In this case their souls were in control and they did not respond to the need of helping the injured man properly. When our feelings are in control our mind then jumps on board to justify our actions. We will never be able to obey God and listen to our feelings.
I’ve really struggled with my emotions in the past. Shocker I know. I was super impatient and would easily get frustrated with people. I learned the hard way (I do that a lot) that my emotional outbursts, impatient body language and eye rolling only made people around me feel less than and damaged my relationships. My soul was stronger than my spirit so I followed the emotions I felt in any given situation..
When the Holy Spirit began to convict my heart to change and actually act Christ-like (you know, like the Christian that I say I am) I began to repent and ask the Holy Spirit to help me apply what I knew and begin to do it. We really don’t KNOW anything until it becomes a part of us and translates into our actions. One decision at a time we can overcome our flesh and respond properly.
God’s promises are true and right and if we decide to walk them out in our daily lives they will work. No matter how bad a temper you have or how impatient you are God can and will help you to change. I want the beauty of Jesus character to be seen in me in, in the way I act and treat people. The more we practice his ways the more they become a part of us. Soon it’s second nature to be patient and considerate to people we would love to smack…seriously though.
Father this is a promise in your word, a promise that you gave us so that we could be victorious over our carnal nature. You desire for us to be conformed into your image. Nothing is impossible with you not even this. Help us Holy Spirit to listen when you prompt our hearts to do what is right and not just what we feel like doing. Give us the grace to humble ourselves and choose patience and love over our own emotions and anger. Your word says the anger of man does not produce the righteousness God desires so help us Father to choose righteousness, choose love, choose to act in the fruit of the spirit when dealing with people. We desire to bring you glory in all that we say and do…Thanks you for being our help, our strength and our comfort because we will mess it up sometimes but we will keep pressing forward in Jesus name!