As we continue our Leading in the Fruit of the Spirit series, today’s focus is patience. Over the my three plus decades as a pastor, the one trait people have asked me to pray for them to gain more than any other is patience. In some of the older English translations of the Bible, the word is translated “long suffering.” That is a great definition of patience, because when we are exercising patience it often feels as if we are suffering for a long time. Patience is needed in order to wait for something we desire to happen or to be completed with a sense that everything is oaky. The challenge is when we’re in the midst of most situations requiring patience it doesn’t seem like everything is okay.
Patience is a quality sorely needed by leaders in today’s world particularly. We live in an instant age. We have fast food, microwaves, and short cuts to nearly everything we do in life. The challenge is as one of my mentors once told me, “There are no short cuts to any place worth going.” While that was an overstatement, the truth is most of the important aspects of leadership cannot be developed or exercise instantly or in three easy steps. Leadership takes patience. Life takes patience. As we’ve noted throughout the week, these qualities are called the fruit of the Spirit by the Apostle Paul, and he understood they would come to all who trusted Jesus as Savior and Lord and lived in the power of the Holy Spirit.
While you may or may not be a person of faith in Jesus Christ, Paul’s assumption was love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control are the supernatural outcome of a life dedicated to God in Jesus Christ. As leaders we need all of these traits if we are going to be the best and most effective leaders we can be. We can certainly develop and exercise them over time through practice, but in order to have them in full measure we must add to our effort God’s presence, power and blessing. When it comes to patience in particular, what I have found over 47 years of following Jesus as my Savior and Lord is exercising patience in both my effort and God’s power makes for success in living it out over time.
Patience has never been one of my natural traits. Part of it is my “instant” personality. In the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator I’m an ENFP, which means I’m an extrovert who gathers information intuitively, analyzes it through my feelings, and doesn’t like order and structure all that much. I think “rules” are “guidelines,” and I never want to wait for anything. Add to that a dad who was angry most of the time, and modeled a “short fuse” type of attitude to life, and patience was not among the top qualities in my natural make up as a person. Some would use that as an excuse for being impatient, and I have certainly done that. If we are going to be better more effective leaders though, at some point we must stop making excuses and start making an effort to change.
For me, the biggest breakthroughs in the area of patience have been related to two primary experiences: 1) the experience of consciously calling on the Holy Spirit to fill me and empower me daily, sometimes multiple times each day; and 2) addressing the life-long anger that filled my heart through a process I learned in Gary Smalley’s book Change Your Heart, Change Your Life. I would encourage you, as I have throughout the existence of my blog to give Jesus Christ first place in your life, and let His Spirit give you strength for developing and exercising all nine facets of the Holy Spirit. That single realignment of our lives makes all the difference.
Please, understand as leaders we do not abdicate our responsibility for personal growth and development, by saying, “It’s in God’s hands,” as I’ve heard many people do over the years. They excuse their lack of patience, or peace, or integrity or any number of qualities by saying, “God hasn’t developed that in me yet.” It sounds spiritual on the surface, but underneath it’s lazy. If that sounds harsh, let me say that I’m one of the laziest people I know by nature. I would much rather let God be responsible for my growth, than taking responsibility for it myself, but I have learned over many decades as Jesus’ follower, that He will always do what I cannot do, but only when I am doing what I can do in my personal growth and development.
Again, if you aren’t a person of faith, the previous paragraphs may not seem to apply to you, but this certainly applies: wherever you and I may be on the patience spectrum right now, we must take responsibility for taking the next step toward patience if we ever hope to be the leaders we can be. Impatient leaders make bad decisions more frequently than patient leaders. Impatient leaders treat people as objects more frequently than patient leaders. Impatient leaders see today as the only time to accomplish the company’s plan, while patient leaders plan a course for success over the long haul. Patience is a virtue, precisely because it gives us time to assess, evaluate, correct, and exercise the best or at least better course of action than when our approach is “Fire! Ready. Aim.”
So, how are you in the area of patience? Do you wait appropriately when necessary, or are you always angry, impatient, and irritable when you have to wait for a result, or a report, or a plan to develop? How you answer questions such as these, can help you see where you are on the patience spectrum. Remember, over time each of us ought to be moving more toward patience than impatience if we are going to be the best leaders we can be.
Here’s to leading better, by analyzing where we are on the patience spectrum and taking a next step toward greater patience–today!