We all long for deep friendships and as you know they don’t just magically happen. Even though friendships aren’t automatic there are key ingredients that help your relationships go to the next level.
One ingredient in particular is so important that without it you will never have deep friendships. Why? Because without this key ingredient your friendships will never last long enough to go deep.
What is it?
Patience.
As soon as you read the answer you instantly knew it was true.
We really struggle with patience.
We are the type of people who burn our mouths on Hotpockets. What’s wrong with us? We spend 2 minutes microwaving our lunch and we can’t wait another minute for it to cool down before we take a bite. We are so impatient 3 minutes is too long for lunch prep.
Suffering a burnt tongue from being impatient with our lunch is one thing, but burning a friendship because of impatience is another.
If we don’t learn to be patient with each other we will never have deep relationships. In fact, the deeper you go in a relationship the more patience you need.
Can I get an “Amen” from all the married people?
The moment we find ourselves having to be patient with someone we think something is wrong. We think… “Oh no! They aren’t who I thought they were! I married the wrong person!” “Oh no! This church has messed up people in it!” (You think!) Therefore… “I need to get out of this friendship and find someone who requires less patience.” “I need to leave and find a perfect church with no messed up people in it.” (Good luck!)
We wonder why we feel so lonely…could it be because we are always quitting on imperfect people?
I don’t think it’s an accident that St. Paul tell us twice…
“Bear with” is something that we don’t have a clear concept of in English. Patience is kind of close but it’s more than that. We often think of patience as waiting. But Paul is asking more of us than to just wait on someone.
Paul is asking for us to endure certain immaturities as someone is in the process of growing.
He is asking us to…
Absorb instead of reflect.
You “bear with someone” when you have the perfect comeback to put them in their place, but you bite your tongue.
Or when you have the perfect response on social media…it’s a zinger…it’s so good…but you back away from the keyboard.
You absorb instead of reflect.
It is a discipline to learn to absorb instead of reflecting. When someone says something immature or hurtful we often want to reflect the same type of hurt back on to them. But Paul is asking us to “bear with one another.” The imagery of bearing with someone isn’t necessarily pleasant. We could also use the word endure or carry. It’s a heavy weight. It’s not easy.
We could say it this way…
I know what you are thinking…Are you saying I should take abuse and let someone run me down? No, of course not. You should have boundaries. What I’m saying is that from time to time people act immature and you have a choice…reflect the immature behavior or absorb it.
Mature people absorb.
Immature people reflect.
Paul is saying from time to time you will be wronged and will need to choose not to retaliate.
The mature person says…I’ll absorb this. I’ll make allowances for your faults.
How in the world can I bear with an annoying person…
Paul says we can bear with one another because Christ bears with us.
I don’t think it’s accident that Paul writes two churches and tells them to bear with each other.
Remember he also told the same thing to the church in Ephesus.
But he writes other churches and tells them to be patient with each other too. (1 Cor. 13:4, 1 Thes. 5:14, Gal. 5:22-23, 2 Tim. 2:24) Paul is reminding all of the churches you are going to need patience with each other.
Sometimes in a church community we might even think… “I don’t have to put up with this!” You kind of do. Paul is asking you to. Paul is asking you to so that you grow in patience and love.
Not everyone that you bear with will become your deep friend. But without patience you’ll never grow deep with those who will.
