How to increase someone’s longsuffering (patience)

This is the fifth post in the Others-oriented fruit of the Spirit series. The topic is longsuffering. Get future posts delivered to you for free by grabbing the RSS feed or email updates.

Yesterday, I started jogging again, the first time since the blizzard of “oh-ten” took my barefooting away. I started well. By the end, though, I’d lost my breath and the front of my lower leg started hurting. That tends to build longsuffering.

What have you done lately that’s built your longsuffering? Maybe it’s easier to think of what’s tested your longsuffering. That’s all over the place, right?

Longsuffering is like… well, suffering. But long. Some Bibles translate “longsuffering” as “patience.” Patience is more modern (though still unknown in practice), but I like longsuffering. I don’t enjoy longsuffering, but it describes the way I feel.

Now let’s turn this around to others-orientedness. How can we use what we’ve learned about longsuffering (even if it’s a nanomount) to increase someone else’s endurance?

Respect longsuffering

If there’s one lesson I’ve learned, it’s that longsuffering is nothing to play with. Patience sounds Christian and fantastic. Longsuffering sounds archaic and painful. So here’s a distinction you and I try to make:

Patience is what we want when longsuffering is what we feel.

But patience is longsuffering. That feeling of suffering doesn’t go away.

I remember hearing about David Blaine, the acclaimed endurance artist and magician, holding his breath for 17+ minutes. Someone said after a certain point he feels the pain as much as we would. The difference is that he’s trained his mind and body to keep going despite the pain.

That’s what patience is. It’s longsuffering. Patience doesn’t mean it feels any easier, just that we continue anyway.

Sorry for the anti-Pot-O-Gold news. The sooner we help others realize and respect the reality of patience, the sooner we can quit looking for the quick fix and begin training for endurance.

Train for longsuffering

Patience (and certainly longsuffering) is active. We often think of it as a waiting game. That’s partly why we fail. I think “longsuffering” highlights this more than “patience.”

Suffering reminds me of torture, which suddenly reminds me that enduring is anything but passive. I’ve never been tortured. From what I can imagine, though, it takes intense mental and physical strength to keep from flipping out.

Speaking of torture, my brother can bust out 200 pushups in one set. I… can’t. He has the endurance – I don’t. Who trained?

So how to train someone? Start by introducing the idea that training is even required. Then…

Purge perceived rights

Everything given to us was given to us. We deserve nothing (except suffering). Thanks to the American mindset, though (which from what I gather has spread elsewhere as well), we think we have rights.

That’s an illusion – a proliferating illusion but still an illusion. We deserve death and separation from God.

That sounds depressing, but it’s actually encouraging because it gives us more reason to be thankful. It’s hard to be thankful for anything we deserve. After all, we’ve “earned” it.

When we reset our baseline at death and separation from God, when we acknowledge that that’s what we deserve, we’re grateful for anything else. Our daily suffering then doesn’t seem so bad no matter how bad it gets (and it does get intense).

Again, we remind others of this by returning to the gospel, counting blessings, and recalling the promises God’s kept in the past. It sounds trite and boring, but that’s really what encouragement’s all about.

Pray that God will give longsuffering (but prepare to encourage)

Pastor’s remind us not to pray for patience because it’s one request God always grants. I agree – longsuffing is always given.

So two warnings on this:

#1. Watch out. God might take the the log out of your eye for you by granting you the longsuffering first. Not wrong – just… different.

#2. Watch out. God might grant your friend longsuffering as you asked, but that means your friend’s suffering. Suddenly, your friend will need some serious encouragement. And as always, one of God’s favorite ways to give encouragement is to make you the encourager.

Welcome to the reason it’s such a difficult calling to help others increase their longsuffering. It means walking through the valley of the shadow of death while helping someone along with you. That’s “shadow of death” valley times two.

So we’ve returned to the beginning. Comforting someone through longsuffering is about sharing with them, running (or barefooting) alongside them. But we do it because we care, because we’re so thankful Someone else did the same for us.

Serving Suggestions:

(1) Suffering is everywhere. Encourage (comfort and strengthen) someone today. It can be as simple as calling to let them know you’re with them. Build endurance – increase longsuffering, not just in yourself, but in the whole body of Christ.

(2) How have you encouraged others to build patience? We’d love to here from you in the comments.