If I’m acting in God’s interests for the good of [my family], I get to model and be an example of what I see God is up to. Instead of deciding what I want to see in another’s life and pushing, pointing, scolding and correcting, I try to cooperate and model a bit of what God desires and trust that it will be contagious.
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We’re concerned not only with the interests and drives of our family members but also with the kind of people they are becoming. We cooperate with God when we’re up to the same thing he is and model what we know he’s up to.
Want more patience in your family? To spread patience, you be more patient. (Gary Morland, A Family Shaped by Grace, How to Get Along with the People Who Matter Most p. 141-42).
Being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience (Col. 1:11). Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. (Eph. 4:2). Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” (Col. 3:12-13). Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. You attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death–even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. (Phil 2:3-11).
1. What does the world have to say about patience? Is it something lauded?
2. According to Colossians, how are the people to have great endurance and patience?
3. What traits appear with patience in the lists of Christian virtues in Ephesians and Colossians 3? Why do you think that is?
4. How does the Philippians define humility? What should our attitude toward others be?