20. Lord, Teach Me Patience…. And Now!

With life today, we want everything right now. We do everything in a hurry. That is the lifestyle of our new generation, our new society.

We want the fastest relief, the fastest automobile. We want to learn quickly and easily. We want fast success. We want to “get there” before anyone else. We are impatient. We’re afraid we’ll be left behind.

Patience is the hardest of all lessons in life to learn. It requires you to be completely honest with yourself as to why you are impatient. When you have looked at yourself honestly, you will be able to learn how to be patient.

A patient person has developed character that will lead to success. The characteristics of a patient person are:

(1) Endurance;(2) Perseverance, which teaches us to prepare as we wait and not become idle;

(3) Steadfastness, which teaches us to remain sure of ourselves in every situation; and

(4) Faith, the most important characteristic of patience. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not yet seen.”

When you employ faith, then you are assured that whatever you are waiting for will come to pass. You believe it into existence. You act as if it has already happened. The man who believes without a doubt is the one who will be successful.

If you doubt any situation, you will give up faster than the person who hangs in there. There is nothing pushing you, nothing to hope for when you doubt.

If you do not doubt, you can keep striving and climbing until you reach the top. You may not see the light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s there. You can hope for it and believe it into becoming very real. It was there all the time.

Never say, “I doubt it,” but instead say, “I believe it,” and act like you believe it, not like you doubt it. Go for it, invest your all and watch the returns.

When you doubt, you only invest a little of your talents and only a little can be returned to you. Show me a doubting person and I will show you a quitter. Show me a believing person and I will show you a winner.

I believed our school into reality. I acted as if it had already happened. If I had been motivated by doubt, I would have given up at the first problem. It would have been a reason to say, “you see, I told you it wouldn’t work; it couldn’t happen.”

Do the following exercises each day to develop patience. Say:

(1) I will wait. While I wait, I will learn, study and be ready for my opportunity.(2) I can endure the pain of waiting. The longer I wait, the stronger I become, and the greater will be my joy.

(3) I will believe and not doubt that every situation will come into being.

(4) I will employ faith in every step I take toward my goals.