Agape

Introduction

Good morning everyone, to start off, I have a question for y’all - Who here struggles with patience?

I don’t think I recognized my struggle with patience until I joined the military. Realized real quick that patience was not my strong suit.

I graduated from Indiana Wesleyan on May 25th and I was sent off for basic training on May 28th.

When we arrived at our company, they offloaded us and got us sorted out into different platoons. For the next 9 weeks...these are the individuals that I would be around 24/7.

Now believe it or not...when you get a group of 15 young adults together who come from all walks of life, sometimes you don’t see eye to eye on everything.

Maybe some of you know what I mean with you and your cottage mates or even you and your staff at times.

Now, throughout the training, we learned the first day a saying that “right time, right place, right uniform.” Meaning...

Now what typically happens when you don’t do meet those requirements in your cottage? (practice)

In the Army, specifically at basic training, when one person doesn’t follow the “right place, right time, right uniform” expectation - the drill sergeants liked to play a game called “make the walls sweat”. Meaning...they would exercise EVERYONE until the humidity of our sweat made the walls begin to feel sticky.

So there was this one individual, there is always one. Who would either be late to formation...would be in the entirely wrong uniform...or he would be lost in another platoon for some reason...

As a result of this guy’s misunderstanding, we all were hurting.

Similarly, there is a situation we read about in the Bible where a misunderstanding was had and the impact was not just on one or two people, but on everyone.

We talk often about a man named Paul from the New Testament. He wrote over half of our NT and is honestly one of the best examples we have today of what it means to be a faithful Christian.

During his ministry, he was known for writing letters or epistles to different locations where there were large groups of believers.

One of those

I recognized the deficiency of my patience.

I slowly became more and more agitated because we were always having to work out as a result of this one guy. And there was a moment in which my patience took a break.

One of our platoon members told me he was sleeping in the laundry room when we were supposed to be formed up. I left the drill pad, ran upstairs, kicked the door open and just start reeming him.

I mean, you would have thought I was a sailor instead of a soldier at that point with what I said to him - with what I called him.

It was hurtful and downright humiliating because the rest of the platoon was right behind me listening as I laid into him.

Not my best moment.

As a result of this guy’s misunderstanding, we all were impacted and not meeting the expectations