Longsuffering

My brothers and sisters in Christ, we must learn how to give others their right to think and feel how ever they think or feel. After all, God made humankind to be “free will” agents on purpose. We, as individuals, cannot force our thoughts/thought process or feelings on others. You and you alone are responsible for your own thoughts and feelings. What we, as Christians, are responsible for doing is letting our lights so shine that men see our good works and glorify the Father, which is in heaven. It is our influence on individuals in our world that bring change to thoughts and feelings.

What does that mean? It simple means allowing others to experience what our thoughts or feelings are about any given situation through our responses. This allows them to process the results of God-driven thoughts and feelings. Then, give them time to make changes. Something that we humans do not like to do - have patience. Change does not happen over night. Think about this; it takes anywhere from 10 days to several months for a caterpillar to turn into a beautiful butterfly. And the amount of time depends on the nature or kind of caterpillar it is. So, here we are talking about humans and we are all different in how we think, how long it takes for us to process a new idea, and so on. We are all different.

Too often we want to make others think the way we think and when they don’t, we refuse to give them the right to think however they think. Then we judge them based on our own thoughts. I have seen things such as this turn into people saying hurtful things causing offense to follow. Now, you have another issue at hand because someone is offended and the whole situation is placed in a position of possible breach of friendship and relationship.

Consider this when being confronted with someone’s views that seem totally indifferent to your view and opinion and allow the fruit of the Spirit to show up in your life. That is, the part of the fruit of the Spirit called, Longsuffering.