“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
Ephesians 5:1-2 (RSV)
When I think about how patiently God has waited and endured the fluctuating highs and lows of my faith commitment in the past, I realize His patience has no time limits. He never gives up on us, He is patient, long suffering and His love endures all the ways and times that we may have disappointed Him.
Although He may be disappointed, God is never discouraged. He loves us exactly as love is defined in the first book to the Corinthians. It says “believes all things, bears all things, hopes all things and endures all things” and that is how God loves us. (1 Corinthians 13:7)
Whatever type of adversity shakes us and distracts our faith or our commitment to Him, God is still faithful, finding ways to bring us back to Him.
His goodness to us is undeserved and beyond all rational understanding.
Paul tells us to be imitators of God, who so patiently waits for us, who believes, bears, hopes and endures all things, and He expects us to do the same for others. We are called to imitate Jesus and walk in love as He loved us, with the same patience, long suffering and endurance.
Children naturally imitate their father or whatever father image they had growing up. My own earthly father was 63 when I was born and suffered a stroke when my mother was eight months pregnant with me, so he was emotionally and mentally debilitated during all the years that I knew him. My brother Teddy, who was six years older than me, was the closest one to a father image that I had. I remember when I was young, I tried to walk like him and to imitate his hearty laugh.
There is a famous saying;
“Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery….”
Whoever we imitate, pays him or her our highest compliment.
Imitating our earthly father image of our youth, should prepare us to imitate our Heavenly Father for the rest of our lives.
God pursues even the most hardened hearts and is willing to wait patiently until a heart of stone changes to a heart of flesh. He sees everyone with forward vision, meaning He knows what we can become, looking beyond our faults and shortcomings. Since God is not influenced by time or space, length of time is irrelevant to Him. His love and patience never runs out, and He can wait for decades, for someone to turn their life over to Him. It’s the kind of love we could never earn.
How do I know all this? Because He did it for me. The God I believe in believes in us. His love bears, hopes and endures all things, for our good. He has always had the best plan for our lives, before we were born, and He wrote it down on the day we were conceived. (Psalm 139:16)
He is patient and never forces His way into our life, He patiently waits for us to ask and invite Him.
God has allowed particular people to come into our lives, even some who test our patience, not to annoy us, but to give us a new opportunity to imitate His love and patience. He helps us to see others with the same “forward vision” that He sees us with.
Paul reminds us in today’s scripture verse, that being imitators of God means to walk in love as Jesus did. Imitation is the highest form of praise. When we think we have been waiting too long for a result, we are reminded that God patiently waited for us and He wants us to imitate Him. We can never love like God does, but we can try, and trying is the first step to imitating Jesus.
Imitation is also a deep expression of thanksgiving. We show God our gratitude with praise, when we seek to imitate His beloved son.
Lord, thank you for your unlimited patience and love, as you wait patiently for us to invite you into every part of our lives. Help us to show you praise and gratitude by imitating your love towards others. Amen
A blurry old picture of me with my two brothers, Ted on the left, John behind me.
For newer readers, the story of Ted’s F-16 plane crash can be read on my website link.https://kissedbythespirit.com/for-the-good-a-memorial/