One big obstacle our enemy throws in our way is condemnation. He makes us feel condemned or ashamed, guilty, fearful, unworthy, forgotten, useless, good-for-nothing. God, though, tells us in no uncertain terms that we are not condemned.

Like any problem or mystery, I want the conundrum to be solved in 30 minutes like a good tv show. I don’t want to be left hanging to find out how things are solved for a week! Good or bad, I want it brought to end right now! However, for years I had no idea how to solve this issue that kept turning over and over in my mind.

We are in a war. We may not realize it as we walk through our daily lives but we are. Romans 5:17-6:23 talks about this as a war between the power of sin and the greater power of God’s wonderful grace.

As I was reading Romans 5 this week, I realized that as Christians there is one of these virtues we rarely talk about. That might be because along the way someone somewhere told us to never pray for patience because if we do something difficult will happen that will teach us the hard way how to be patient. How to endure.