What fun is that?!!!
Now may the God of patience and comfort grant you to be like-minded toward one another, according to Christ Jesus, that you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 15:5–6).
What a great benediction this is. When we recognize who God is, the God of patience and comfort, we realize that those attributes come from the God who is God of them. In other words, if you lack patience, long-suffering, endurance, perseverance, and the ability to bear up to the face of difficulty, and if you lack comfort or encouragement (these are other English words that translate the Greek for ‘patience’ and ‘comfort’) you need to run to Jesus for help. He is the God of these things. He is the source of these things
Notice too that much of the time, the circumstances that produce the need for patience and the events destroy our comfort are not the actual problem. Life happens; wives are naggy, husbands are hard, children are whiny, bosses are strict, customers are self-absorbed. Life is hard. But when the God of patience and comfort gives you something, he gives them to you in the midst of life. Life may not change, he often changes you in the midst of life.
And what does Paul pray that God would give us? He asks God to give us like-mindedness. We need to realize that much of our lack of comfort, our anxiety, and our worry and strife comes because we aren’t like-minded. And we can’t be like-minded until and unless the God of patience and comfort gives it to us. Continuing in the way we are headed with our friends, neighbors, and family members will not change until we drop to our knees and ask the God of patience and comfort to change us; to make us like-minded and to give us a little bit of patience and comfort in the process.
What is the result of being like-minded? That with one mind and one mouth we give glory to God the Father and to our Lord Jesus Christ. What fun is that?!!!
When we submit ourselves to God, obeying him in caring more for one another’s concerns than we do for our own, then the things we talk about will be things we agree on (everything) and when we talk about the glories of God in our lives and relationships, God gets glory and we are blessed.
Is there strife and haggling, anger and clamor, grumpiness and quiet, arguing and war among you? Are you living in an active train wreck, just waiting for the pieces to stop swirling around and the dust to settle? Go to Jesus. The God of patience and comfort will share with you, giving you patience and comfort, creating in you one mind. Your life, even if still filled with the circumstances of life, will be filled with joy.