Our Long-Suffering Lord

Long-Suffering: Patient; slow; to be slow to anger; tarry long

The Lord does not hasten to punish us, instead He patiently presents us with many opportunities to retrace our evil steps. Our long-suffering Lord is the one who has unlimited patience with His creation (that's us, just in case you were wondering). He’s the one who puts up with us and gives us ample time to use the energy, movements, and powers that He has given us to be used according to His master plan and will. Therefore, He grants us patience and time, again and again.

Our long-suffering Lord wants us to take on His long-suffering nature and to "...walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, with all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love. Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." (Ephesians 4:1-3). 

Let's use the children of Israel as an example of how the Lord is slow to anger: He wanted the children of Israel to be a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation (Exodus 19:6), but what He got was a murmuring and complaining group of people - even after they had seen His miracles and wonders.  Despite all they had seen, they got off track. Regardless, every time they cried out to Him, our long-suffering Lord delivered them.

The Lord suffers long with us because he does not want any of His creations to be lost. In Ezekiel 33:11, the Word tells us that He has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. Our Lord is not some mean God that sits on the throne just waiting to beat us over the head when we do some thing wrong. Instead, our longsuffering Lord takes exquisite pleasure in waiting for us to gain the victory in the fight and to struggle against the temptations that come into our lives (using all of those tools He's already provided us with, of course). What an awesome long-suffering Lord!

Our long-suffering Lord is forever giving patient consideration to our weakness and underdevelopment, because He knows our weaknesses can be brought to greatness if we would simply surrender and willingly be obedient to the merciful and gracious, slow to anger, long-suffering Lord. If we would just do that, we can also achieve mature moral development, because the Lord is long-suffering and patiently waiting on us.

With all that said, let the church say amen... and AMEN!