Bearing with Others
How tolerant are you of the people in your life?
Verse of the Day
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.”
‘Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love.’ Ephesians 4:2 NLT
Today’s Devotional
Ouch. This verse stings. I have a “fiery” nature, accompanied with a quick tongue. Many years ago, my husband encouraged me to be kind and gentle. Especially in dealing with him and my daughter. My default nature, the part of me that acts without thinking, is very quick to be harsh or sarcastic. So this verse is very poignant for me, and very hard for me to obey.
Today, I don’t struggle as much with those things. Partly because of age and maturity, but also because of some soul searching and working on my character defects. But if I’m honest, I still really struggle with complete humility, complete gentleness, patience and bearing with the perceived faults of others. Do you?
I like that the mention of being patient in this verse is followed by “bearing with one another in love”. I had a situation this morning where I was becoming irritated by someone making noise (opening a candy wrapper) during a meeting. It was distracting. To me it seemed rude. And apparently it was difficult to open because the crinkling noise lasted for a long while. Now at the point where I noticed that I was irritated, I had a choice. I could shush this person, I could cast a shaming glance in her direction, or I could choose to accept that she is maybe not as socially aware as I would like and choose to focus all the more on what is being said at the meeting. Thankfully, I chose the latter. (Today.) But this decision was made more difficult because the offending noise was being made by a person that I do not particularly like. I find that it is much easier to “bear with” people that I already like. But God does not qualify the Scripture with things like “Obey when it is convenient” or “Love only the people that you like”. In fact, in Luke 6:33 Jesus says, “And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do that.”
Directions like the ones in today’s verse are listed many times with many variations in the Bible. Why? BECAUSE THEY ARE HARD. It’s hard to be nice to each other all the time, and God knows that. It’s hard to be completely humble and gentle. It’s hard to be patient. It’s hard to bear with each other in love. But love is what we are called to do. The beautiful part of these instructions is that we can invite the Spirit to fully take over our words, actions, and body language so that we can obey even when it’s hard.
Journal Prompts
Answer only the questions that seem relevant to you today.
Is your natural response to be humble, gentle and patient? If not, which one of those is the most challenging?
Are you willing to ask for God’s help with that quality?
What can you do today that is more humble or gentle or patient?
If there is a person that comes to mind that you do not particularly like, pray for them today to have all of the blessings in their life that you wish to have in yours.