Exposition
Jesus died on the cross to make peace between you and God. He promised His disciples that He gives peace not as the world gives, but peace from the Holy Spirit (John 14:27). God’s peace is not like the peace of the world. The world’s peace is based on the world’s thinking, which is the thinking of Satan. The world’s peace is circumstantial and depends on comparisons. The world’s peace is fleeting; It may be here one moment and gone the next. One of Satan’s tricks toward man is to whisper threatening predictions and to lie about the meaning of the present situation to get you to forget the truth that you know and believe. God’s peace, when it comes, overshadows and drives away the anxiety of the world.
With the fast-paced ways of our society, many people have very little patience today. One of the ways of our God is that He is a very patient and longsuffering God. His ways are not our ways. And one of the things you will find out very clearly about His ways is that He sometimes works in a “much slower time frame” than we expect. Unless you learn to adjust to His way of working things out, you will find yourself easily losing your patience with Him and how He wants to work things out in your life. You will have to work with the Holy Spirit on this particular fruit to get it properly worked up into your personality. The reason for this is that your impatience will start to act up and try to override the patience and longsuffering that the Holy Spirit will try to transmit to you. At times, it may become the battle of wills – your will against God’s Will. But once the Holy Spirit begins to manifest this quality in your personality, then you have to try and move with it and allow it to get worked into your mind and emotions. If you do this, then His patience will start to override your impatience, and before you know it, your fuses will start to lengthen and you will not lose your patience like you used to do.