LS014b - 'Love Is' II - Longsuffering & Gentleness

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

Galatians 5:22-23

Hello everyone, it's Valentine's week and I hope you are all feeling suitably mushy!

I'm going to continue where I left off yesterday by continuing to look at what love is to me so if this challenges some of your perceptions then good, I've gone and done my job.

Let's move onto the second part...

Longsuffering & Gentleness

When it comes to love and your relationships, what immediately springs to mind when you conjure up "longsuffering"?

For me, again, I think of God and just how patient He has been in working with me, fashioning me and moulding me into His glorious image daily: -

For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

I have to remember that, though I'm still in a lot of emotional turmoil even six months on from what I found out about a certain girl, the healing process is just that; a process. I also have to remember that though their is pain in the process, there is purpose in the process too.

Nobody knows why this has happened the way it is; getting dumbstruck with shyness around a girl I fell for over and over again. I just have to trust God's gentleness as He deals with me and moulds me evermore into His likeness by allowing not causing difficult circumstances to come my way in order to fashion me into the man He needs me to be to embrace my future tomorrow.

Do I still like her? Of course I do, but there's nothing I can do about it anymore for to get what I want I'd have to break up a relationship.

This is NOT how we roll, baby!

I, again, have to transcend this difficulty by remembering that God is still on the throne, He will bring me through this and not only that but I'll come through this better than I was before.

This is why a song like this is so relevant to me right now because I am indeed "rising from the ashes of defeat": -

I might not like the way things worked out today, but they have worked out this way so I have to deal with it, move on and live with the consequences of my inaction. Thankfully, though, I've got the Gentlest Hands in the Business to rely upon rather than people who, as people do, have been letting me down an awful lot in this process.

It happens because only God can be relied up on at all times, so let us not rely upon our disappointment in other people for that will only alienate us from them. They are not perfect. They have lives to live and mistakes to make too.

Final Thought

Next time your partner lets you down, think about the times that the shoe has been on the other foot and you have let them down.

Are they still with you?

Then celebrate because they clearly wish to transcend your differences and stick by you through the thick and the thin.

Let's exercise gentleness next time the temptation arises to pull our partners down because they are not perfect and chances are they are just trying to find their feet and their purpose in this world so they will make some stupid decisions and say some stupid things.

Peace!

===TLP===