You don’t wake up the morning of the Boston Marathon and decide you want to run the 26.2 miles. You could, but I seriously doubt you’ll be very successful. Unless your idea of success is passing out at the 3 mile marker.

You don’t wake up one morning and get patience from a vending machine or through one of those On Demand channels. Patience, like any other fruit of the spirit, has to be cultivated. You start by planting a seed, watering it, nurturing it, and so on.

If you develop a passion to know God through His word, to learn to be still and hear His voice and heed what you hear, then the seed will grow. If you seek every day to let the Spirit lead, to surrender yourself to whatever God has for you that day, then the tree will grow strong. If you keep seeking God and keep loving Him and His people, even on those days when you don’t feel like it, the fruit will start to show.

Your feelings will tell you lies. What you think will mislead you. You have to keep practicing faithfulness until the feelings come around. You have to pursue these things like a man in the desert would pursue water.

I want good fruit. I want to show a life that’s been changed by Christ. I want to be so filled with His love and His life that people who see me are drawn to Him. That my life would be a written love letter from God to the hurting and hopeless and broken and outcast.

Growing fruit takes time. There are no shortcuts to spiritual maturity. But getting to know the heart of God and having your heart transformed into His are worth whatever it will cost you and the time spent is never wasted.