In our previous message on this page, I addressed “patience” and offered the words to a song written and sung by Wendell Jellison, a pastor in Tennessee, urging us to be patient with our Lord when we present petitions to Him … as His plan and schedule is not necessarily the same as ours. And, of even greater importance, is to not allow Satan to intervene as we await the response to come down from above.
As a follow-up to my placing the spotlight on Mr. Jellison and his song, both here on the website and on enLighten, we received this testimony from Penny, who lives in Muncie, Indiana:
If you look on the CD album cover, Brother Wendell Jellison gives special thanks to his friend, Tom Davis, for making the CD possible. Tom Davis is my husband and I’m not sending this message to be giving any praise to my husband, but to show just how GOD does work in HIS own time. Approximately three years ago, the owner of a recording studio in Tennessee asked my husband if he could help him reconstruct his studio. My husband spent several months doing so with the understanding it would be without monetary pay, but that we could have a recording done by our daughter, my niece, and my cousin, who is also Brother Jellison’s son-in-law. Needless to say, we could never get the three together to do this. My husband kept after Brother Jellison to make a recording of his own instead. After much time and prayer, Brother Jellison agreed to do so. The song, Sometimes It Takes Time For God To Move, is a true testimony of how … if we are just patient with GOD and turn everything over to HIM … he will move! My husband and I know personally how very true it is.
Fruit . . .
In the Scriptures, about half of the references to Patience and “being patient” are made by the Apostle Paul in his epistles to the various churches he had visited. Of course, he included it as one of the Fruit of the Spirit when writing to the folks in Galatia:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
The American Heritage dictionary has this to say on the subject: “Patience is any admirable endurance of a trying situation or person, usually through a passiveness which comes out of understanding.” I might add “ … or being a loving Christian individual.” I must say that while I may write on this subject, I cannot claim to be the most patient person on earth, or anywhere near it. I’d like to be and keep trying but … there’s just too many things that get under my skin. My only claim is that I do my best to express my extreme frustration politely. That’s my story … what is yours?
Summing it all up, how can the way we should, the way we need to live be described any better than Paul does in Romans 12:12:
Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.
Friends . . .
In closing, I just had to share with you this thought sent to us by Kerri of Pembroke, Massachusetts:
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.
