283. The Power of Patience

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Transcript

So let it grow, and don’t try to squirm out of your problems. For when your patience is finally in full bloom, then you will be ready for anything, strong in character, full and complete.

James 1:4, The Living Bible

I started taking guitar lessons when I was fourteen.  After playing a little, I asked my Mom for a better guitar.  She bought me a used Ovation acoustic guitar with a built in electronic pick up.  It was a beautiful guitar with a rounded back.  I took lessons and Sanders Music in downtown Grass Valley, California.  Jeff, my instructor was in a band, had long, curly hair that was obligatory for any musician in the late seventies and early eighties.  He taught me the basics about chords and then started teaching some songs like “Lonely is the Night” by Billy Squier.  I learned some parts of the songs, or “licks,” but I hit a plateau in my musical skill.  I couldn’t seem to make any progress and develop the skills I admired in musicians I heard on the radio.  I figured I just didn’t have what it took.  I quit my lessons.  I kept my guitar but remained stuck at that same level of musical skill for decades.  Even now I can still play songs I learned forty years ago.  My Mom would tell me wistfully over the years that Jeff, the guitar teacher, told her when I quit that I had the talent and ability to play guitar. 

Looking back forty years later, I no longer think I was missing any musical ability.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t see myself as a natural music prodigy like Mozart.  However, I think I could have become a competent guitarist had I wanted to.  The only thing missing at the time was patience.  Had I stuck it out and worked through the pieces of music that frustrated me I know for sure I would have picked them up and learned them.  I wish someone had pulled me aside and shared with me Ben Franklin’s words on the subject of becoming good or great at anything.  He said,  “Genius is nothing but a greater aptitude for patience.”  What I needed was the patience to endure the boring process of going from an idealistic beginner to an experienced master guitarist.

Great guitarists became that way by patient practice of difficult pieces.  Eddie Van Halen, guitarist for the band, Van Halen learned to play through patience.  When his brother and friends would go out on a Saturday night, he would stay home.  They’d leave at 7:00 pm and when they came back at 3:00 am, he’d be sitting in the same spot on the edge of his bed practicing his licks.

This principle applies to every area in which you want to excel whether it is a technical skill, work-related skill, relational ability or spiritual growth.  It takes patience to become excellent at anything.  So often we start off optimistically envisioning ourselves as doing amazing things, becoming great at something and then after learning a few easy lessons and making rapid improvement, we hit our first obstacle or barrier.  We try hard and can’t seem to make improvement.  At this point,  we are often tempted to quit or turn our attention to another field or focus for our energies.  I like what George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, has to say about this critical moment everyone faces on their path to mastery, “You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks, jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls that are always going to be placed in front of you. If you don't have that kind of feeling for what it is you're doing, you'll stop at the first giant hurdle.”  I love how he ties love to the fuel for patience is love.  When you love something enough, you’ll be willing to push through the boredom, opposition and times of slow progress.  Patience will keep you grinding through to the next breakthrough. 

If you want to become a fruitful, multiplying disciple there are a number of skills and disciplines that you must master to have maximum impact in this world.  These are things like:

·         The discipline to connect with God first thing in the morning

·         Waking up early

·         The ability to sit quietly and pray and meditate for a set period of time

·         Knowledge of and fluency in the location and use of scriptures

·         The ability to teach the gospel or study series to a seeker from step one to being born again

·         The ability to speak and communicate effectively one on one, in small groups and in front of larger audiences

·         The ability to listen well and ask good questions

·         The ability to reconcile fractured relationships

·         The ability to “read people” and recognize non-verbal clues and body language

·         The strength to confess sin and come back from a spiritual setback

·         Fasting

These and many other skills are the tools in the spiritual person’s toolbox.  They are not easy and are developed only through patience.  Many people start strong in their walk with God and then hit their first roadblock.  They drop out of the fellowship because they are unwilling to do the tedious work that leads to spiritual abundance.

I needed patience to write my first book.  A book can’t be written in one sitting.  It takes multiple hours and days of consistent effort.  When writing my first book on church planting, I forced myself to sit down for three, forty-five minute sessions five days a week for a month.  I knew I needed about 30,000 words to produce a book.  That works out to 1500 words for the 20 days of that month.  I would wake up in the morning, say a short prayer and set an egg timer on my desk for 45 minutes.  I would write whatever came to mind during that time.  When the alarm went off, I gave myself fifteen minutes to use the restroom, check my phone, get fresh coffee and anything else.  Then I’d force myself to go for my second and third forty-five minute session.  I didn’t worry about quality, mistakes, excellence during those sessions.  All I expected was that I sat in my chair patiently for forty-five minutes.  In thirty days, I had produced a book.  That book is not War and Peace.  But that book is my first book and fulfilled a life-long dream I had to write a book.  It was a topic I had experience and enthusiasm for.  It just took a little patience.

While living in Oregon, I read a book by Brian Tracy.  He recommended that I spend time every day, “going into the silence.”  Sitting quietly and coming into contact with the “Super Conscious Mind.”  I interpreted that as just another word for God.  He claimed that if I did that for sixty minutes, I would start to see amazing results in my outward life.  I was surprised to read this instruction in a business and personal development book.  I was reading it for help in my real estate career.  What he was talking about spilled over into my spiritual life and my work as a self-supporting minister.  I thought it was a good idea and started to work on developing a deeper meditation and prayer life.  As he mentions in the book, the first twenty minutes are pure torture.  It’s not hard to understand what is needed.  It’s hard to sit and do nothing at all.  He predicted that I would be immediately tempted to get more coffee, check the time, check my phone and reshuffle papers on my desk.  He was absolutely right.  It took patience to force myself to resist those temptations and distractions and to sit quietly and think about God, visualize the future, be grateful for the blessings in my life or at very least simply concentrate on my breathing.  After I broke through that initial period, I noticed that my breathing slowed, my heart rate slowed and new ideas started to float into my mind.  God would casually drop ideas into my mind.  I learned to keep a yellow pad nearby to record the ideas the “Super Conscious Mind” would offer me.  The benefit for me has been less anxiety, greater peace, more appreciation of God and the ability to see beyond my immediate problems to focus on God’s power, love and greatness.  Many people start meditation practices but soon discard them because of the distracted, crazy thoughts that get revealed when we sit quietly.  As Blaise Pascal wrote long ago, ““All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”  If you want to get deeper in your devotional life, in “practicing the presence of God,” it will take one thing above all, patience.  You have to be able to force yourself to sit quietly for a set period of time no matter what you might be feeling, thinking or experiencing right at that moment.  The victory is in the patient sitting.

About five years ago, I dusted off my guitar after not playing it for decades.  This time I decided to apply a little patience to my practice.  I started lessons again.  This time they were online.  The difference this time is that when I hit pieces that I can’t master immediately, I force myself to simply keep repeating them until I get musical piece “under my fingers.”  I’m not on track to dethrone Jimi Hendrix as the greatest guitarist of all time, but I’m growing, getting better and am able to play complete songs, serve on our church worship team and enjoy progress in my playing.  As Axl Rose says,

“…take it slow
It'll work itself out fine
All we need is just a little patience”

Application

What area of learning, skill or ability have you started and then abandoned?  Was it,

·         Guitar

·         Piano

·         Drums

·         Programming

·         Computer usage

·         Martial arts

·         An Exercise regime

·         A foreign language

·         Reading the entire Bible

·         A deeper prayer life

·         Memory scripture?

Whatever it is, ask yourself what role a lack of patience had in your quitting.  Did you try until you hit a roadblock and then were too impatient to stick with it through the boring period of skill acquisition?  There is power in concentrating on skill acquisition.  As Bruce Lee said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”  Before you get good or great at anything, you must go through the desert of repetition without immediate rewards.  However, once you make it through, your patience will have rewarded you with a skill that very few others will have. 

This week pray about what area would you like to grow in.  What one thing, if you could do it well, would make the biggest difference in your spiritual life, your relationships, your financial world and your work.  Make a decision that you will patiently learn the skill for a set period of time without quitting and when you hit a roadblock, view it as a sign that you are on the road of true mastery.  Let patience do its work.