Longsuffering

We need all the components of God’s love in whatever we do in life. Let us not discount our need for makrothumia (G3115), the longsuffering that God brings, for doing the things that our life requires of us.

Almost everything that we do in life will involve other people. Family and work situations usually rate highly on the list of areas of our lives that often cause the most contention with other people.

The propensity of most people is often towards seeking a change in other people by demanding that they change the way they think and behave towards ourselves and other people. Yet the best catalyst for change in others is the love of God. But in order to see the love of God move amongst those people whom we do day-to-day life with, we must take the initiative and make the decision to not be provoked by who they are and what they do.

The best way to see people change is to accept them as they are. It was commonly thought amongst Christians that to instil a change in others, you had to pester them, patronise them or even punish and reject them in some way. But these methods are often a cover for the issues that we are trying to deal with in our own lives.

It was the Lord Jesus Himself who said that we should not judge other people. (See Matthew 7:1-2 and John 7:24).

I like the way The Message translation puts it:

1 "Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults - unless, of course, you want the same treatment.
2 That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging.
Matthew 7:1-2 msg

We judge other people when we pick-out their faults and compare ourselves with them. We must understand that other people’s lives, and their life-plan, might not be like ours. We often do not know what someone else is going through. When it comes to sin, we know that the only sin that the Holy Spirit convicts the world of is not knowing Jesus. (See John 16:7-10). Therefore, we should move away from rating sins on a scale from one to ten.

Only by accepting people as they are can we truly become the light of the world. Otherwise, we simply end-up provoking other people, perhaps scaring them off and just making life difficult and unpleasant for ourselves and other people.

The things we do in life are made much more pleasant for ourselves and other people, if we allow the love of God to enable us to see the best in others and to be patient with them and to not be provoked by them.

I think it helps to know that only Jesus can change a person – we are only the instruments that God uses to help make those changes in other people.