While I was going through my week, A friend of mine who was giving their house back needed to re-paint it before giving it back. While we were doing a repaint, one of the things that we had to do included scraping off the old paint before we put the fresh new paint. As I scraped off the paint, in the beginning, it seemed easy and so much fun. But, as I continued to scrape off all the remaining paint, this process seemed to take more time than I thought that it would. I began to think to myself,” isn’t this what God does in our life while he creates something new in us, he scrapes of those old habits piece by piece as he creates something new in us?”.
Later the next day as I was gardening at a friend’s house, we were clearing up all the weeds and this meant cutting them from the stem of all the individual plants and sweeping them away. I then asked myself the same question, “isn’t this what God does in our lives to create something new in us?”. One thing in particular that caught my attention was the time it took for me to cut all the individual branches and scrape off the individual patches of paint. I began to become impatient and just wanted it to go faster. But it took some time and I just had to be patient.
As I reflected back into my own life, I began to realize all the different moments that God was working on my transformation and creating something new in me, building new habits and new characters in me. These processes of transformation were never instantaneous. So as I performed the two activities It had me seeing that God’s transformation in our lives can also be a process, it may take some time for God to mold us into the beings he wants us to become, to the purpose he has called us to and that he is very patient with us. Clearing out the old habits one by one.
From these two events, a beautiful picture of God’s great mercy was also depicted to me of how much our heavenly father cares about us, he is very very patient with us at every step even as we journey on this beautiful adventure to be transformed to be more and more like Christ. To help me remind myself of this, I constantly refer back to this bible verse in Philippians 1:6.
“I am convinced and confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will [continue to] perfect and complete it until the day of Christ Jesus [the time of His return]” – Philippians 1:6
Just as the gardening and painting took a lot of time and effort, it reminds me of the saying
“Rome was not built in a day.” And in deed, patience is a virtue! Knowing that the Lord is patient with us, we too need to be patient with him and with ourselves as well. We should not expect God to follow our timeline but trust in his timeline for our lives. The Holy Spirit lives within us and thus is able to bear the fruit of patience in us.
