A Handmaiden of the Lord, Post #7

Self-Control is...

...siting down and making myself write a post when I'd much rather be off the computer.

But I said I'd write 5 posts this week, so I will. :) But y'all will probably be glad to get a break from my long-winded posts that I've been writing lately. This will be short and sweet.

(Next week I plan to share photos of the projects I sewed for Christmas. Stay tuned!)

A Handmaiden of the Lord has...

patience.

Yes, perhaps the ultimate area of self-control. I heard a mother explain patience to her child like this;

"Wait with a smile."

Us older folks don't really need to be told what patience is. We know what it is, and we know we are to have it. Of course the Bible is full of verses telling us to cultivate patience:

"Now we exhort you, brethren, ...be patient toward all men." (1Thess.5:14)

"And the servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient,
In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth;" (2Tim.2:24-25)

A verse that really taught me a lot about patience doesn't even contain the word patience. Right before reading it, I was complaining about how my younger siblings tried my patience, and I guess in my mind, their wrong-doing gave me a right to be impatient. Then I read this:

"They angered him also at the waters of strife, so that it went ill with Moses for their sakes:
Because they provoked his spirit, so that he spake unadvisedly with his lips." (Ps. 106:32-33)

This verse makes it quite clear that the Israelites were provoking. They were in the wrong.

So Moses "spake unadvisedly."

And God punished him.

Whoops. There go my excuses.