Patience Part 1: Five “Patience Hacks”

31 Jan Patience Part 1: Five “Patience Hacks”

We all need more patience

A snail was oozing its way across the garden when a turtle came up and mugged him. When the garden police got there, they asked the snail if he could give them a description of the turtle. The snail said, “No — it all happened so fast!”

In contrast to that, there are things in life that happen to us that require patience and we don’t like moving slowly. We want things to speed up so we can be rid of them. Most of us don’t like to have to be patient.

I remember when I was very young, perhaps four or five years old, and had just eaten a peach. One of my siblings told me that the seed on the inside was what peach trees grew from. They told me that if I planted the seed, a peach tree would grow from it and bear more peaches.

Eager to witness this phenomenon, I scurried to the backyard where I planted the peach seed in the sandbox. I slept that night with visions of peach trees dancing in my head. The next morning, I went out to the sandbox. There was no peach tree. As I stood there, the disappointment grew rapidly to anger. I ripped the peach seed out of the sandbox and threw it as far as my chubby little fingers could throw it into the field adjoining our backyard.

I have been struggling for patience ever since.

Our culture views patience as a virtue:

• “To lose patience is to lose the battle.” Mahatma Gandhi
• “He that can have patience can have what he will.” Benjamin Franklin
• “The strongest of all warriors are these two: time and patience.” Leo Tolstoy

The Bible views patience as a virtue:

• Patience is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23
• Patience is a mark of biblical love (1 Corinthians 13:4)
• Patience is a virtue that Jesus modeled for our benefit (1 Timothy 1:16)

I think patience is such a difficult virtue because you don’t do anything. With the virtue of diligence, you do something. With the virtue of honesty, you do something. But with patience, you don’t do anything. You just wait. Most of us don’t wait well.

Patience is required of us on two levels:

1. Life irritations which come at us like mosquitoes on a sultry summer evening
2. Very hard circumstances that require significant cultivation of patience

Next week, in Part 2, we’ll look at patience in coping with very hard circumstances, but this week we’re going to look at:

Coping patiently with life irritations

Irritations come at us almost continuously in the living of everyday life. We all identify with the prayer, “Lord, give me patience… and hurry!”

We might need patience for relentless bad traffic, for the questions of a toddler, or the irritations of a careless and obnoxious coworker.

I do not intend to imply that these things are “nothing.” If we do not cope with then, we can all die the death of a thousand small cuts. But they are certainly easier to deal with than truly life-altering things that require patience –  or else!

For the normal irritations of life, I have found these “patience hacks” personally invaluable.

Patience Hack #1

Serve the Lord by serving the offenders

Years ago, my wife and I lived in Atlanta – a rapidly growing city that has never been able to catch up to its need for more highways. It is a large and sprawling city, and on good days, I had to drive 45 minutes each way from home to work. On bad days (meaning on days when there were accidents) that could easily go to 60 – 75 minutes each way. It was not unheard of to spend an hour and ½ on the road each day – sometimes more.

That kind of traffic can do a number on your brain. You can get very possessive about your spot in the line, very jealous about cars not taking turns, very resentful of rude drivers. I would often end up at my office in a boiling rage, and I then had to sit down and write about how people should live a good Christian life.

I thought, “There’s something wrong with this picture”

So, I determined that I would serve the Lord by serving other drivers. I determined to be courteous to other drivers who were careless, I determined to be generous to other drivers who were stingy, I determined to be cautious of other drivers who were reckless. I determined to try to help make the world a little better place by how I drove. I even thought to myself, “this might catch on and I might be able to initiate a highway revival in Atlanta.”

If you have been through Atlanta lately, you know that I did not initiate a highway revival, but it initiated my own revival and changed my life in a significant way.

Some years later, I was further instructed, and affirmed in my decision to serve the Lord by serving those who irritate me, by a child who said to her mother who was taking her to child-care, “Mommy, I don’t think God wants you to talk to the other drivers like that.”

Patience Hack #2

Visualize the forthcoming experience

The brain does not distinguish between a real and a vividly imagined event. That is why athletes spend significant amounts of time visualizing peak athletic performance. That is what golfers are doing when they step up to the tee and stare down the fairway before taking their swing. They are visualizing the perfect golf shot, which research proves will help them be more successful.

If I know that I will be going into a situation that requires patience, I find it helpful to visualize myself being in the situation and responding appropriately before the event gets there. Rehearsing appropriate behavior helps produce appropriate behavior. And remember, “Repetition is the key to mental ownership!”, which leads us to Patience Hack #3.

Patience Hack #3

Rehearse Scripture and/or affirmations about patience regularly

In a closely related hack, it can be very helpful to rehearse Scripture or affirmations on daily a basis, even if you aren’t aware of an upcoming situation in which you will need patience.

This does three things.

1. It allows the Holy Spirit to convict you of sin and call you to righteousness (John 16:8).
2. It allows the brain to rewire itself, physically improving your ability to act consistently with the Scriptural truth, preparing you ahead of time for irritations that might otherwise have caused you to respond impatiently.
3. It kicks in the Reticular Activating System, that cerebral doorkeeper that allows things into your brain. When your brain sees that acting patiently is a value to you, it allows you to see things in your environment that support that value which you would likely have missed if you weren’t rehearsing that truth.

One of my affirmations is, “I leave behind small attitudes, values and behavior, and I rise to great ones.” I’m not perfect in executing, but I do much better than if I didn’t rehearse.

Patience Hack #4

Determine not to be manipulated by the enemy.

The enemy plays mind games with Christians. For example, in Ephesians 4:26-27, we see that if we do not readily repent of anger, it gives the devil a spiritual warfare advantage in our life.

If Satan knows that you will not resist a temptation toward impatience, he will dangle a situation in front of you, like a matador dangling a cape before a bull, knowing it cannot resist charging the cape. Knowing that the devil was manipulating me like that was a powerful motivation for me. I would look at a situation that might normally elicit a strong reaction of impatience, and something clicked in my mind saying, “I am not going to let him manipulate me like that.” It gave me valuable patience.

Patience Hack #5

Give grace and choose to behave better than difficult people around you.

We cannot know what experiences difficult people might have had as children growing up. They might be scarred by things that might have scarred us, too, if we’d had the same experience. Who knows what kind of person I might be if I had had the same experiences others have had. So, it was helpful for me to have a measure of understanding like that, and then to determine that I was not going to respond to them in like fashion.

Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Doing an injury puts you below your enemy. Revenging one makes you but even with him. Forgiving it sets you above him.” It’s not Scripture. But it’s still true. The only way we can be greater than those who offend us is to be patient with them.

Conclusion

So, to grow in your ability to cope patiently with normal everyday-life irritations, try these five helpful hacks for increasing your patience.

Next week, in Part 2, we’ll look very hard circumstances that require significant cultivation of patience. I hope to see you then. 

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