#11 Patience is Your Secret Weapon

 


Time Stamps

  • 00:00 - Welcome from Dan and Anna

  • 04:05 - Talk: Patience - Your Secret Weapon for Daily Triumph with Dave Connolly

  • 07:32 - Patience as a Divine Quality: How God Models It First

  • 13:45 - Two Types of Patience We All Need

  • 19:13 - Practical Ways to Grow in Patience

  • 31:33 - Conversation Street: Finding Patience in an Instant World

  • 38:12 - Patience as a Choice: How to Access More

Patience: Your Secret Weapon for Daily Triumph

Love, joy, peace—these fruits of the Spirit sound deeply spiritual, almost mystical. But this week, Dave Connolly continued our "Becoming Whole" series by tackling something that hits a bit closer to home: patience. Because if we're honest, patience isn't just about feeling spiritual—it's about how we actually live our lives day to day.

When the Rubber Meets the Road

"Patience as a fruit of the spirit means, on one hand, the ability to endure, for a long time, the kind of suffering and opposition that may come our way," Dave explained. "And on another hand, the ability to endure the weakness and the flaws of others, including other believers."

This is where our faith gets practical. 

It's one thing to talk about loving others in theory; it's another to remain patient when someone cuts you off in traffic, when your child asks the same question for the fifteenth time, or when your colleague drops the ball on a deadline.

During Conversation Street, Anna reflected on how particularly challenging patience is in our instant-gratification culture: "Especially in our culture, patience is hard... More and more life is getting faster and faster. Technology and our digital age is making everything more and more instant. Patience is just not something that we like to do or we're good at doing."

Learning from a Patient God

While many people picture the God of the Old Testament as angry or distant, the very first description God gives of Himself in Exodus 34:6 is actually quite different: "The Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love."

The entire biblical narrative, from Genesis to Revelation, tells the story of God's incredible patience—with Israel, with humanity, and with each of us. And nowhere do we see this divine patience more clearly than in Jesus, who endured the cross with supernatural patience.

As Peter reminds us in 1 Peter 2:23: "When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate. When he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly."

This reveals something profound: true patience isn't just gritting our teeth and bearing it. It's actively choosing to entrust ourselves and our circumstances to God, believing He will ultimately bring justice and redemption.

Two Types of Patience We All Need

Dave outlined two specific types of patience we need to develop:

1. Patience in Suffering

"It is very clear in the Bible that God's people do and will suffer," Dave noted. Around the world today, millions of Christians face persecution for their faith, and closer to home, many of us know people enduring various hardships.

This kind of patience isn't about passively accepting injustice, but about maintaining hope and trust in God even when circumstances seem bleak. It's remembering that, as Paul writes in Romans 8:25, "If we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

2. Patience with Others

Perhaps even more challenging is choosing "to bear with others, rather than cutting them off because they annoy us, or let us down, or do wrong to us."

As Paul writes in Ephesians 4:2, we're called to "be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love."

During Conversation Street, Dan and Anna discussed this challenge, with Matt commenting that he struggles with patience toward his neighbours. It's a relatable issue—how do we maintain patience with the people we can't escape, whether family members, colleagues, or neighbours?

Dan observed, "It's the hardest when you can't physically get away from someone."

The Heart of the Challenge

Dave admitted his own struggles with patience, noting: "I'll be first to admit that I am probably not the most patient of people. I still haven't fully figured out what is more challenging—patience with others or patience with God."

This honesty touches on something important: patience doesn't come naturally to most of us. According to psychologists, we're wired to think first about ourselves and how situations affect us, not about others. Similarly, seeing things from God's perspective requires intentional effort.

"To be patient means to choose to stand with God where He is and not in the circumstances where we are," Dave explained. This shift in perspective transforms waiting from passive endurance to active trust.

Practical Ways to Grow in Patience

So how do we actually become more patient people? Dave pointed us to several Scripture passages that offer guidance:

  • Romans 12:12: "Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer."

  • Galatians 6:9: "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

  • Romans 8:25: "But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently."

  • Hebrews 10:36: "For you have need of patience, that after you have done the will of God, you might receive the promise."

During Conversation Street, Dan and Anna discussed whether we can pray for more patience. Anna admitted, "I feel like patience is not something I regularly pray for more of, and I probably should. I'm not an especially patient person as my husband will be the first to tell you."

Dan shared a story from the gospels about a man whose healing came in stages rather than all at once, suggesting that sometimes God grows our patience through incremental progress rather than immediate transformation.

Dave himself commented in the chat: "Patience requires us to put our trust in God while we are waiting." This captures the heart of the matter—patience flows from trust. When we believe that God is good and ultimately in control, waiting becomes more bearable.

A Choice We Make Daily

"Patience is a choice. It's something you actually do. It's not just something that gets put upon you... We can choose to wait and we can choose that patience and it's a gift from God."

This means that even when we feel impatient (and we all do), we can still choose patient actions and responses. And since patience is a fruit of the Spirit, we can ask God to cultivate more of it in our lives.

Like Jesus, who endured the cross "for the joy set before him" (Hebrews 12:2), our patience grows when we focus on the bigger picture of what God is doing. This doesn't mean pretending that waiting and suffering aren't difficult—they absolutely are. But it means remembering that there's purpose in the process.

As Jerry Bridges puts it in the quote Dave shared: "Patience... seeks the ultimate good of the other individual, rather than the immediate satisfaction of our own aroused emotions."

Your Next Step

As we continue our journey through the fruits of the Spirit, consider these practical steps toward growing in patience:

  1. Identify your patience triggers: Where do you find yourself most impatient—with certain people, situations, or when waiting for specific things?

  2. Ask God for help: Make patience a regular part of your prayer life, asking the Holy Spirit to develop this fruit in you.

  3. Practice small acts of patience: Start with small daily opportunities to practice patience, whether it's waiting in line without checking your phone or listening fully to someone without interrupting.

  4. Remember God's patience with you: When tempted to lose patience with others, remember how patient God has been with you.

Join us next week as Matt and Sharon Edmundson continue our "Becoming Whole" series with a look at kindness—another essential fruit of the Spirit for our journey toward wholeness.

"Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love." (Ephesians 4:2)

 
 

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