Have you ever been grouchy or impatient toward someone? Did you know that Jesus died on the cross to set you free from that? Jesus didn’t just come to pay for our sin; He came to set us free from the reign of sin. Peter tells us that we have become partakers of the divine nature, and the nature of Jesus is to never be grouchy or impatient. Feeling grouchy, or feeling impatient is not a very fun feeling, and it certainly doesn’t reveal the glory of God, so why in the world would we want to hang on to the right to be impatient and grouchy? I can promise you that the people around you are hoping you don’t hang onto that right because when we are impatient and grouchy, we are being used by the enemy to impact those around us with unnecessary spiritual warfare.
I have found over the years that is particularly easy to be a grump when I am tired; haven’t you. But it is a significant and liberating truth to realize that you can’t use tiredness as an excuse to be un-Christlike. Jesus didn’t, and He still won’t if you are trusting Him to live His life through your life story.
John 4:6-7 NLT
Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. [7] Soon, a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Please give me a drink.” Notice that even though Jesus was extremely tired (that’s the idea of the language grammatically in the Greek New Testament), He didn’t complain to God or act like a grump to the woman. As the human God, Jesus was as tired as you and I get when we are exhausted, and yet the enemy couldn’t trip Him up into acting out anything other than Christ-likeness because that’s what Jesus does. He always acts Christlike because He cannot deny Himself. It is that same Jesus who has joined Himself to us and declared Himself to be “our life.” Therefore, when you and I are confronted with an opportunity, even in our tiredness, to be impatient or a grouch, there is an even greater opportunity to say yes to His life in us in us, allowing us to experience glorious liberty from the reign of sin and to participate in and reveal His glory. The fruit of the Spirit does include continual love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and gentleness. Nothing about that sounds very grumpy, does it?