We've been thinking all week about the fruit of the Spirit as Paul describes it in Galatians

chapter 5 and I've been reading out the verses because that way I hope we'll memorize

these wonderful words of the Apostle Paul almost without effort.

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

gentleness and self-control.

And so at the end of the week we've come to the second triplet of these spirit nurtured

graces, patience, kindness and goodness.

And they do seem, don't you think, somehow or another, to be long together.

Patience

The New Testament has two different Greek words that can be translated by our English word

patience.

The word Paul uses here is the word macrothumia.

It's a compound word from macroth which means long, long in time or long in space far

away and thumas which means anger or passion.

The Bible teaches us that God is patient.

The Lord is merciful and gracious says Psalm 103.

The Lord is slow to anger and abounding instead fast love.

We sometimes speak about people who have a short fuse and this word patience suggests

that a Christian is someone whose fuse gets longer and longer and longer even in the face

of provocation.

And you can see where the motivation for this grace comes from, can't you?

It's because God has been so patient with us, so as his children we breathe in the family

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