Annoyance

OK, so  it is technically week two and I should have moved onto the second fruit I want to start growing, but I’m not quite done with patience.

I want to point out annoyance. Annoyance is pretty closely related to anger, but not quite the same thing. Being annoyed usually leads to anger.

A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult.   Proverbs 12:16

Above is my favorite verse. Its one of the few verse I’ve learned on my own for personal reason. My brother enjoys annoying me. It’s usually mutual. But he is really really good at pushing my buttons. The important thing to remember is to use patience to not show the anger from being annoyed. It’s pretty difficult.

That’s all I really had to say upon the subject. But I wanted to add something about anger. There is a thing called righteous anger, which is not often what kind of anger we get. But even with righteous anger, we need to be careful with how it expressed.

I’m going to end this post with some more verses (all from Proverbs, so I think Solomon would agree with me) upon this past weeks subject:

A fool always loses his temper, But a wise man holds it back. Proverbs 29:11

Better a patient person than a warrior, one with self-control than one who takes a city. Proverbs 16:32

A hot-tempered person stirs up conflict, but the one who is patient calms a quarrel. Proverbs 15:18

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil. Proverbs 37:8

Anger

I’d like to think that I’m patient, but I realize that I’m not usually. I get mad easily. I’d like to say it runs in my genes, but that’s not an excuse. Anger is one of the biggest foes of patience.

In fact the Bible tells us “Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry” in James 1:19.

And in Proverbs 14:17, “A quick-tempered person does foolish things, and the one who devises evil schemes is hated.”

In Psalms 37:8 it says “Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil.”

Ephesians 4:26-17 says “’In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”

Anger is something that isn’t easy to ignore. When it comes, it just boils under and we just feel like we have to let it out. This is where patience comes into play. A lot of the times, the things that anger us the most, are pretty petty. If we can be patient enough not to blow up, then it could solve a lot of relationship problems.

I personally can say that I am quick to anger when it comes to my rabbit. I love Nosey to death, but sometimes, he knows exactly what buttons to push. He knows he’s not supposed get on top of his cage, yet every night he persist to get up there. And when he hops down, he takes everything down with him. I know he knows better because when I look at him, his ears go down knowing I’m going to scold him. When he’s down then he proceeds to give me kisses, and then I forgive the adorable bugger, but he has been my biggest test all week. Second to Nosey, my brother makes me the maddest, but I’ll delve more into that in the next post.

Anger tends to strike when we are stressed as well. I remember around finals time last semester snapping at my friend because she was freaking out about a cd and her bed posts. Being stressed is like a taught spring ready to release with the littlest of movement. It is in these times that we need to step back and ask God for peace and calm, so that we can perform with out tearing someone’s head off.

Week 1: Patience

For the first week, I’ve decided to grow patience. I looked verses on patience, and most of them had to do with waiting for the Lord. I decided to look up the definition to better define what I am trying to achieve. The definition I found was “bearing provocation, annoyance, misfortune, delay, hardship,pain, etc., with fortitude and calm and without complaint,anger, or the like.” So basically calmness in situation where calm is not what I want to feel.

I’ve decided to make a list of questions to ask myself at the end of each day:

1. Did I ask God to help me patient today?
2. Did I use patience in every situation today?
3. Were there any times that I could’ve been more patient?
4. Even if I didn’t show it on the outside, were there any times that I felt inpatient in my heart?

Today, I think went pretty well. But since it’s only day 1 out of like 70…  

Introduction

I was just reading around in my Bible, thinking about what I had learned this past weekend, when I came across the Fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22. I remembered someone preaching about how the Fruit of the Spirit are not gifts but have to be grown. They used the verse from John 15:5 stating “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. ⁶ If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.” Well I've heard this before, a lot, but I never really gave it much thought. Putting two together, I realize that we must grow the fruit of the spirit ourselves, with the spirit's help of course.

Thus it came to my mind, to start a fruit challenge. Each week, I'll be choosing a new fruit to work on producing in my life. As each week goes on, I'll add a new one, while continuing to work on the one before. I'll be journaling each day (in my personal journal and sometimes on here) to assess what I've learned, what I've struggled with, and what wasn't so bad. I expect some fruit to be harder than others. I’ll read all I can in the Bible about the fruit of the week along with my normal devotional.   Additionally, I'll be asking God to help me with this fruit, which, knowing him, he'll give plenty of opportunity to use it.

I'd like to challenge you, whoever you are, to do this challenge with me. Talk to me about it, and keep me accountable to keep going through with it. I'm hoping something amazing will come out of it.