Thursday, March 19th | Daily Devotion
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
“I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." –Ephesians 4:1-3
TRANSCRIPTION:
Good morning. Grace and peace be unto all of you, my Father’s children on this wonderful Thursday.
We have been anchored this week in the theme of patience — and today Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus brings us face to face with one of the most practical and, if we are honest, most convicting dimensions of what patience actually looks like.
Paul opens the fourth chapter with a direct appeal: walk worthy of your calling. And the very next words he uses to describe that walk are humility, gentleness, and patience — specifically in how we bear with one another in love.
This passage stares directly in the face of something we say all the time. I ain’t got time for that. And yet what Paul is saying is the complete opposite. When you are walking in the Spirit, when you are genuinely loving one another — you have time. You have time to be patient. You have time to bear with someone else’s faults, their quirks, their frustrations, their growth process. That is what being a Christian looks like in practice: taking time for people.
And here is why that conviction runs so deep. Somewhere along the way, God decided He had time for you. Think about that. With everything that exists, everything He sustains, everything He governs — if anyone had cause to say I don’t have time for this — it would be Him. About us. And yet He does not. He is patient, gentle, and present toward us in ways we do not always deserve.
So when we, as believers, walk around saying we do not have time for certain people — especially those we call brothers and sisters in the body of Christ — something is misaligned.
These words — humility, gentleness, patience — feel almost countercultural right now. In a season when none of these attributes seem to be modeled anywhere in our public life, Paul is calling the church to be different. I do not know exactly where this lands for you today. Maybe your patience is being tested by someone with a different ideology. A different political viewpoint. A different cultural background. A different way of seeing the world. And I am simply standing on the other side of that to say: this is what it means to walk as a Christian. Patient even when frustrated. Gentle even when assaulted. Humble even when offended.
That is not weakness. That is Christlikeness. And just imagine — if we genuinely treated everyone around us with the patience God calls us to — how different our homes would feel, our communities would look, our days would go.
Just think about it. Have an incredible Thursday. I pray this has blessed you.
📖 Join us this evening for Bible Study at 6:00 PM — we are continuing our study in the book of Ezekiel. All are welcome, both in person and online.