Ephesians 5:15-33
15 So be careful how you live. Don’t live like fools, but like those who are wise. 16 Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days. 17 Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do. 18 Don’t be drunk with wine, because that will ruin your life. Instead, be filled with the Holy Spirit,19 singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, and making music to the Lord in your hearts. 20 And give thanks for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
21 And further, submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 For wives, this means submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23 For a husband is the head of his wife as Christ is the head of the church. He is the Savior of his body, the church. 24 As the church submits to Christ, so you wives should submit to your husbands in everything.
25 For husbands, this means love your wives, just as Christ loved the church. He gave up his life for her 26 to make her holy and clean, washed by the cleansing of God’s word.[a] 27 He did this to present her to himself as a glorious church without a spot or wrinkle or any other blemish. Instead, she will be holy and without fault. 28 In the same way, husbands ought to love their wives as they love their own bodies. For a man who loves his wife actually shows love for himself. 29 No one hates his own body but feeds and cares for it, just as Christ cares for the church. 30 And we are members of his body.
31 As the Scriptures say, “A man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.”[b] 32 This is a great mystery, but it is an illustration of the way Christ and the church are one.33 So again I say, each man must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
“Washed by the cleansing of God’s word” (verse 26). Here is another reason to hide God’s word in my heart. It cleanses me. Obviously, God’s word shows me what’s right and what’s wrong, but it also shows me what life is to be like as I walk what Jeremiah calls the “ancient path”–God’s path. (See Jeremiah 6:16.)
It’s not just behavior, it’s my attitude as well. Perhaps even more so. It touches my intentions and motives. Now patience for me seems to be a small piece in the bigger picture. There’s so much more I need to work on. I need to check my motives and intentions. I need to look deeper. I think if I do this then my issue with patience will be covered.