I love this. Maybe because I grew up seeing it every day. But what I love is the constant reminder that God is working on our behalf even when we aren’t being patient with ourselves. Being patient doesn’t mean doing nothing. Listen to find out how being disciplined and consistent is also a part of being patient.
Podcast Transcript for episode 14 – Please Be Patient, God Isn’t Finished with Me Yet
Growing up I had this framed cross-stitched picture that said, “Please be patient…God isn’t finished with me yet.” I am pretty sure it was in my room to remind my mom to be patient with my dramatic personality, but I saw that every day. And I may not have consciously read it, but it stuck and it is a very clear memory in my mind. I used to think that this only applied to kids, but oh boy was I wrong. This applies to everyone no matter what our age is! God is always working on our behalf. Hopefully as we get older we have picked up a few more good habits and left some bad ones behind, we are still learning and growing.
This struck me today as I was meditating and praying. I will admit I have been feeling disconnected and I can feel a sense of manic or frantic doing in me. Yet, every time I pray all I hear and sense is, be patient. God knows patience in situations for myself is not my strong suit. If I do the right things I would like immediate actions. For example, I have been reading about investing and wealth management and have taken steps to improve my finances, but I’m not a millionaire yet. This will take time! I need patience. I have been eating healthy and working out for a week so why haven’t I lost 10 pounds? This will take time and patience. I started my business a few months ago, why do I not have ladies knocking down my door? This will take time and patience. All of these things all take consistency and discipline. All three of these words are hard. Patience. Consistency. Discipline. I am not sure I could have picked any three harder words to put together. I have also learned that being patient doesn’t mean not doing anything, but it also doesn’t mean doing things out of fear. Remember, God is always working on your behalf. That statement in itself should take this amazing weight off of your shoulders. He is working on your behalf and helping and guiding you and your actions along the way. So in my season of patience I get to do the two other hard words. I have to be consistent and disciplined because I know that at the end of this season, the outcome will be so amazing that it will be worth the wait. Sounds easy, right? Nope. So hard. So how can we do this? How can we be patient, consistent, and disciplined at the same time? One day at a time. Thank you Papa Dean! If you don’t know who I am referring to, listen to my podcast, “The Girl with Many Faces” and you will learn.
Back on track here. Pick one to start with. I am never going to say to do everything at once. Everything I have read and listened to always recommends doing small steps for lasting impact. And when I say one, I mean one word and one habit that falls under that word. Let’s use my finances as an example here. If I had to order my words with finances I would say it first takes discipline, then consistency, and then patience. To start, discipline. I have to continually think about making smart money decisions and how I could be using my time and money smarter. My financial mentor tells me to stop buying books. This is a small silly example, but to him, that is a waste of money when you can just go to the library. As I look at my stack of books on my desk and count up the dollars, ummmm, yes, I could have saved a lot of money. My rationale is that I like to go back and look at pages I have flagged and passages I have marked. However, in reality, I rarely do that. I also had to look at where my money was going each month and if there were places I could cut spending. Or shift the spending to saving. Saying no every time my kids ask me for something from Kwik Star can be hard, but first of all they don’t need anymore sugar in their lives and second, I could be putting those dollars to good use. This is all discipline. Yes, we will slip up, but just get back on track. After we have discipline down for the most part, comes consistency. To me, discipline becomes consistent after a few weeks or months. It no longer feels like it takes discipline, it is just part of what you do and you are consistent with it. It is now your habit. Now for the hard one. Patience. You can work through discipline quickly and move into consistency, but you cannot hurry up the patient part. You cannot make time go faster thank goodness and you cannot be so disciplined and consistent that you don’t need to be patient. But through being patient I am still taking action, I am still making the choices and doing the actions that support me being patient. So being patient doesn’t mean that we just sit and do nothing, but it is taking the small steps that we can be consistent with that help guide us to our end goal.
Let’s look at another example — running a marathon. This might seem extreme, but I think you’ll understand the analogy. You cannot simply wake up the day of a marathon and say, “I’m going to run this today,” and come out feeling great. Well, most of us can’t anyway. This is why there are many, many, many marathon training schedules that take months! Training for a marathon is something that takes discipline, consistency, and patience. Again, you aren’t just being patient. You take the steps and the actions to help you get to your end goal. I have run a full and a half marathon and during both times of training there were times when I didn’t want to run. I didn’t want to get up early. I didn’t want my legs to feel like jelly. But I did it. Because I had the discipline to reach my goal. I had consistency. I had patience.
So pick one thing you want to accomplish and one of the 3 hard words to start with. Maybe your goal is to be a better partner and you feel like that will take a lot of consistency in your actions. Pick one action you can do today that you know you can be consistent with. You can build from there. These three words are so closely tied and work together to help us reach our goals. And yes, they may blur together all at the same time. But I don’t want you to feel overwhelmed thinking that you need to be everything at once. You need to be patient and forgiving with yourself during this process too! Just know that you can do this. You can do hard things, and God is always working on your behalf.
Something Better, My Darling 