Demonstrating Patience With Other People
Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others.
Demonstrating patience with other people can be one of the most powerful examples of God’s love for us. As the Golden Rule teaches, we are to do to others as we would like others to do to us.
I can’t think of any instance where I wouldn’t want other people to treat me with kindness, compassion, and especially patience. As God’s children, our patience affects our ability to be a positive example and to share God’s message with the world.
Knowing that, unfortunately, doesn’t make being patient with other people any easier! The truth is, some folks will try your patience regularly.
It’s tough to get along with someone who continually interrupts what you are saying, bothers you at work, has terrible timing, or tells boring story after boring story.
Read and Learn More How Leaders Can Cultivate Patience in an Impatient World ?
Sometimes, our impatience with other people injures no one but ourselves, such as the silent, petty impatience with perfect strangers we experience throughout the day.
For example, how many times have you secretly fumed at a very slow customer you got stuck behind in the grocery store? Do you think he realized how annoyed he made you?
I am a very fast walker, so one area where I am challenged to keep my patience is when I get trapped behind a bunch of slower walkers. They may be having a great time meandering down the walk, catching up on a conversation.
But I am immune to their good times. I bounce on my toes like an Olympic sprinter, waiting and watching for any opening where I can squeeze in and pass the inconsiderate horde.
The fact of the matter is that your anger and impatience toward those loud people at the next table or the teenagers who rammed into you on the bus don’t affect them in the least.
They are oblivious and, while rude; they aren’t out to get you personally. Most of the time, we just endure it silently. But instead of letting it go, we can let these nuisances build until our whole attitude is damaged.
God teaches us to release the negative emotions that these petty annoyances can cause and to set our minds on more constructive endeavors:
And now, dear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable.
Most often, our impatience is directed not to the strangers on the street, but toward our friends, family, and co-workers, which can negatively affect our relationships and lead to unresolved conflict.
God wants us to treat others with the respect and empathy they deserve as children of God. As annoying as people may be, they are important and unique to God, made in His image. Every one of us has immeasurable value, just because He created us.
Demonstrating patience with other people helps develop understanding, empathy, and compassion. Part of being patient is to learn to work out our conflicts.
Patient people take the time to process what they go through and identify which things that bother them are valid and need attention, and which are petty and picky. This results in better, more fulfilling relationships with spouses, friends, children, and bosses.
Impatience with another person often occurs when we think that person is in some way hampering our goals. We may even believe they are challenging or condemning us; we don’t feel support for our desires, so we get annoyed and impatient.
The truth of the matter is that we all approach life from a different perspective, but for each and every person that perspective has ‘me’ in the center. All other individuals and circumstances ripple out from that center.
Our goal as Christians is to learn to take ‘me’ from the center of our perspective and replace it with ‘God.’ On the occasions we can pull that off, our first reaction to an irritating person is not to complain about them verbally or internally, but to deal with the situation with optimistic endurance.
Doing so creates more patience and compassion; we learn to overlook their shortcomings, knowing that we probably have a few of our own! The ability to replace ‘me’ with ‘God’ and to deal with annoying people with patience doesn’t happen overnight.
Like a bodybuilder must work out their muscles to grow stronger, we need to take the time to develop our patience toward other people. Chapters four and five will give you some tips and techniques to help you build that strength.