2020-05-11 Coffee with Hannah - Patience

Hannah discusses the topic of patience and how it can be challenging for many people, including herself. She talks about how patience is tested in different aspects of life, such as work, school, and waiting in line. She mentions her experience as a pharmacist and how the patience of people waiting for their medications is tested. Hannah acknowledges that it is easier to be patient when things are going well, but it becomes harder when faced with inconveniences or difficult times. She cites a verse from Romans that emphasizes the importance of being patient in affliction and highlights that God's grace is there to help us when we lose patience. Hannah emphasizes that learning patience is a lifelong journey and encourages being patient with ourselves and our spiritual growth. She also discusses the current COVID-19 situation and suggests that it is an opportunity to do God's work and make positive changes. She concludes by mentioning another verse that emphasizes the importance of not g Hi guys, this is Hannah here, first guest star of the Coffee With series. So today I am just going to delve into a thought that has been crossing my mind recently and I just wanted to share with you guys. So patience. It's something that I feel like a lot of people struggle with, myself included. You know I'm very much the type of person who's like oh I gotta go do this and do that. I like my list of tasks and I like to complete them. So oftentimes as life goes we don't get to do what we want to do or things that we had planned to do gets you know kind of discombobulated and you know life happens as the expression goes. So you know I have definitely run into a lot of situations where I find it easy to lose my patience. And you know patience is something we run into, run into trouble with on a daily basis. So at work, at school, you know when waiting in line at the grocery store. Especially now with the whole COVID situation people are waiting longer than they need to. I'm also a pharmacist at Trait and definitely the patience of people waiting for their medications has been tested on a daily basis because we're getting a large volume of people coming in to pick up their medications. So I think you know it's very easy to be patient when things are going your way, when you don't run into inconveniences. But it's when our patience is tested when you know we do meet those inconveniences, when we do meet those hard times. So Romans chapter 12 verse 12 says, be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, and faithful in prayer. Patient in affliction, that's definitely something that is very hard to do. But the wonderful thing is whenever we do lose our patience at something, God's grace is there for us. And he's saying, look I'm going to give you a lot more opportunities to learn patience. And oftentimes it's a process, it's not a you know one-time fix. It's a lifelong journey. And I think as we you know continue to look to Jesus and to see his example, and as we continue to walk closely with him, that's a lesson that we will continue to learn every day and get better at. I think an important thing also is to be patient with ourselves. You know it's very easy to kind of give us a slap on the hand and say, oh you know you were not patient today, look what you did, and put a lot of shame and guilt onto us. But that is not what Jesus does. He doesn't come to us with shame and with guilt, but he comes to us with patience, love, and forgiveness. And I think that that's something that we often miss is being patient with ourselves and with our spiritual growth. Okay guys, so just to wrap off, you know in this whole COVID situation when a lot of people's patients are tested, what is God saying to us in this moment as we wait patiently for COVID-19 to hopefully taper down and for the medical authorities and experts to come to a cure for it? I think that's a you know a very important question to ask ourselves, you know what are we doing in this time? You know this time there's been a lot of changes and a lot of things that we had to adapt to, but change isn't always bad and there is a lot of opportunities with change. You know it's not that you know we can only do God's work when churches are open, when things are open, when life is normal so to speak. You know we have even greater opportunity to do God's work in this time and I think for each one of us it looks different and we need to ask God and see where in our area of focus and in our lives we can share the gospel to other people. Another verse that I think of is Galatians chapter 6 verse 9. It says, let us not become weary in doing good for at the proper time we will reap the harvest if we do not give up. So again another concept of patience you know as we do God's work you know patience is key too because oftentimes we don't see the harvest so to speak. You know we might come into contact with a person who is hurting and it seems like our attempts to care for that person and our attempts to be in their lives doesn't work out, but we never know just how important the seed that we plant is. We never know, sometimes we never see you know many years down the road how that event could have impacted that person's life and so yeah so this is just my encouragement for you guys this week. Be patient with yourself, be patient in doing good even though we might not see the results. You know be patient in sharing the word of God and yeah so until we meet again see ya!