Like Royalty: Patience

Summary:

• Today we are going to be talking about patience, what older versions of the Bible called “long-suffering.
• The princess we will be talking about today is Cinderella
• Summary of Cinderella
  • Cinderella lives with her father 
  • father remarries
  • father dies
  • the step mother spends the family fortune on her to daughters, which allows the house to start becoming unkept
  • Cinderella becomes the servant in her own house
  • she constantly is waiting on the rest of her “family” hand and foot
  • one day, there is a ball to find the prince a wife
  • the step mother and step sister make it impossible for her to go 
  • at the last moment Cinderella godmother appears and transforms her rags into a beautiful dress angles slippers
  • she goes to the ball and falls in love with the prince
  • sadly she has to leave by midnight so she has to run out
  • the prince searches the kingdom for her using the slipper she left behind
  • when the kings men get to her house the step mother attempts to lock Cinderella in her room
  • but her little mice friends help free her
  • in the end she proves that it is her slipper and she lives happily ever after
• this is a great story, full of ups and downs
  • I love listening to this story because it is a wonderful story of patience
  • Cinderella was in a terrible situation with terrible people, but she was able to wait it out, even though she didn’t know she was going to be free.
  • in the beginning of the movie it says that Cinderella stayed ever kind and gentle through it all.
  • clip
  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6gSiaAXz1c
• I am sure you have all heard the phrase, " Patience is a virtue"
• In order to practice patience we need to understand what it is:
• According to the Dictionary:
• Patience: the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like
• Let's look at patience in scripture
• Colossians 3:12-13New International Version (NIV)
• 12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility,gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
• • The biblical word translated patience Col 3:12 is "makrothumia"– which means to be able to wait graciously and without overreacting when we are being afflicted by people.
  • You’ve heard about individuals who are said to have a “short fuse” when people bother them. 
    • This biblical word for patience means to have a “long, long fuse” with difficult people.
• As a Christian, there are two related convictions we have as Christians that should change the way we deal with difficult people 
  • Conviction #1: God is patient with troubling people 
    • Exodus
    • Of course, God is able to be patient because he knows – he knows everything.  He knows where everything will eventually lead so he is never in a hurry.  We do not know everything.  So, our patience is fully dependent on our trust of God.  You cannot be patient without faith in God to work all things together for a greater good.  And you cannot be patient without the hope that comes from faith in God
  • Conviction #2: Evil cannot be overcome by evil
    • Romans 12:17 & 21 “Do not repay anyone evil for evil…(v.17) Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good (v.21).
    • Here is what we see in the world: When someone insults you, you insult back.  When someone hurts you, you hurt back
• What Patience looks like:
  • There is a rather broad spectrum of "difficult people" in our lives. 
    • 1) Some are people who don’t seem to like you 
    • 2) There are others who have wronged you in the past  
    • 3) there are also those who seem to have it in for you – who want you to fail.
  • Step 1:  Pray God’s Blessing on Them
    • Bless those who persecute you… (Rom 12:14)
    • often this will come in the form of forgiveness
      • Col 3:13, i.e., “Forgive as the Lord forgave you.
      • forgiveness does not mean forgetting
  • Step 2: Get Into Their Shoes
    • When you begin to ask God to help you empathize with people in such a way that enables you to see their perspective, you will see that you will not be quite as impatient.
  • Step 3:  Stop the Harm But Let God Judge
    • our goal should never be to harm our enemies
    • it should be to stop the hurt
    • as we talked about earlier, evil cannot be overcome by evil
      • evil can only be put out with love and kindness
      • evil will only fuel more evil, which will propitiate the cycle further
• So what’s the point?
• We all have difficult people in our lives
• hopefully not as difficult as Cinderella’s step mom and step sisters
• or maybe just as difficult or worse but in different ways
• we all have difficult people in our lives.
• If we follow these steps we have learned today, we will be on our way to seeing things differently
• When we start viewing people from a different perspective from our own, it will help us become more patient towards them