Dishing Up Devotions for Homeschooling FamiliesSample

Striving for Patience

Our lives are filled with moments of anticipation, requiring an extra dose of patience regularly. As kids, we agonize over everything from waiting for dinner to counting down all 365 days until our next birthday. As teens, we measure the time until we can get our driver’s license, date, graduate, and become adults. Then we move from finding the right spouse to having children or getting a promotion. 

The Bible offers countless stories wrought with longing for things that had not yet happened. For generations, people waited for the coming Messiah. After Jesus’s death on the cross, His disciples waited three agonizing days for Him to rise again. And after Jesus ascended into heaven, the disciples prayed for 120 days in the upper room before the Holy Spirit came and settled upon them. 

In our own lives, the most challenging exercise of patience often comes as we wait for the answers to our prayers. I’ve waited more than a decade for God to answer several of my own and have found the key to patience is living in anticipation without dwelling in expectation. I know God has heard me and is moving on my behalf, even when I don’t see it. I have learned to pray and prepare, taking whatever actions I can as the Holy Spirit leads—while I grow steadily in patience. I have realized if I don’t keep moving forward, I can get stuck in the waiting and become discouraged. 

Whatever you are patiently (or impatiently) waiting for today, place it in Jesus’s hands and trust Him to fulfill His promises beyond your wildest imagination—but stay present to your purpose so you don’t lose yourself in the waiting. We serve a faithful God and can put our trust fully in Him. 

Family Activity

Plant a seed and talk about the patience it takes to wait for it to grow. Explain how we often experience times where it feels like we have been left in the dark. The truth is, we have not been buried but planted. God is doing a work within our hearts that will blossom in the right season. Explain to your kids that one of the tricks to waiting patiently is to pray and then let go. If we do nothing except stare at the dirt, it will not make the seed grow any faster.