In this episode, CCEF faculty explore the multifaceted nature of patience. From personal anecdotes to biblical insights, listen as they delve into why patience is challenging, how it can lead to profound personal growth, and practical ways to develop patience in challenging situations. They discuss how patience shapes our relationships, our understanding of God's timing, and our ability to trust in his plans.

Mentioned in this episode: We're just a couple weeks out from the 2025 CCEF National Conference! We'll be taking a look at the life and ministry of the apostle Paul to see how we can grow in our care for one another. Registration closes after September 29, so register soon! We hope you'll join us this October 3–5, whether virtually or in-person in Hershey, PA. To learn more and register, visit ccef.org/2025.

00:00 Introduction
01:45 The Multifaceted Nature of Patience
04:56 Why Patience Is Hard
10:17 What Patience Produces
23:46 How to Cultivate Patience

Hello and welcome to our CCEF Podcast: Where Life & Scripture Meet. My name is Gunner Gundersen. I serve as the Dean of Faculty here at CCEF, and I'm joined once again by my colleagues Esther Liu and Darby Strickland. We're just a couple weeks out from the 2025 CCEF National Conference, and we're really hoping that you'll join us Friday through Sunday, October 3–5. We'll be taking a look at the life and ministry of the apostle Paul to see how we can grow in our care for one another. Registration is closing after September 29, so please do register soon. If you're already registered, we're thrilled to get to see you soon. We do hope that so many of you will join us, whether virtually or in person in Hershey, Pennsylvania, this year. If you want to learn more and register, can visit ccef.org/2025.

Our topic for today is . . . patience. I guess you can ask yourself how hard was it to wait for the revealing of this topic? And then of course I'm reminded you saw it in the title already so you knew, but even when you know what's coming, isn't it just a little weird to wait longer or differently than you expected? Sure it is. And with that aside, in reality, whether it's a very small amount of time or whether it's what seems like an unending, relentless amount of time, patience is just something that we are regularly needing to live with and others in our lives are living with as well. So we'd love to explore this topic together. Before we get more specific though, can we just talk about what are some big arenas of life that require patients? What are some of the biggest categories where patients tends to be required?

Darby Strickland

I often think of patience with myself, particularly when I'm working on a project, I just can't get something right or there's something in myself that I keep seeing show up again and again. I'm just having patience with like, Lord, why, why aren't I getting this sooner, quicker, faster? So I think patience with ourselves would be one area.

Esther Liu (03:28.438)

I think of how tempting it is to be impatient while driving and just the red lights or slow cars or traffic, or all of those things that delay the speedy arrival from one destination to the other, can tend to bring out impatience. But I think it's all those inconveniences that can accumulate over time that aren't super substantial, but in the moment just feels very inconvenient and very unwanted and the inclination to kind of lash out or grumble in those moments. I think of those, yeah, unwanted obstacles that can come our way in daily life.

I think the arena of uncertainty and unpredictability can be very difficult in terms of patience where we just don't know what the path ahead is going to look like. We don't know what's going to materialize around the corner. And we know that something will be required of us when that time comes, but we simply don't know what that might be and what it is that we'll be dealing with.

Darby Strickland (04:39.551)

I think the other reality is just patience for people. People are not convenient, right? Relationships can be difficult. I think of like as a mom, being patient with my children sitting in the car when they were small and waiting for them to put on their seat belts. Oh my word, I used to try to make it a game. Like who can get theirs on faster? It seemed to take them forever. You can put, you know, pick the first song. So there's just so . . . and that's a silly example, but it can be patience with a relationship that you're just seeing somebody fall short again and again. Patient with other people's process of their sanctification or how they do life really differently. So I think patience for other people is pretty much high demand in our lives.

Yeah. So there's so many different major arenas where patience is required, and each one of those is worth exploring. And patience has some similarities in each of those arenas, but it also has some distinctives in each of those arenas. But our focus today is going to be in a little bit of a different direction. We want to ask the question, what does patience produce? What does patience produce? So how does God use patience in our lives to do good? And we'll touch on some of these different arenas as we go, but we want to ask, What does patience produce? I want to start though with this, before we get into what it produces: Why is patience hard? Why can it be so difficult to exercise patience, to have patience required of us to be put in situations where it is the only godly response, right? It's the main response that may include other things, but it is absolutely required of us in the situation.

Esther Liu (06:42.73)

This is not the entirety of the difficulty, but certainly we live in a culture and a day and age that really prizes quickness and immediacy when it comes to like two-day shipping or fast food and going through the drive through and just the way that technology is advancing the trajectory of that is like more and quicker and speedy and immediate and all of that. And so it can be humbling sometimes when we're so used to that and it seems to be moving in that direction more broadly. And then we're confronted with the reality of our lives that there are actually certain things that can't be two-day shipping situation and can't be just driving through the drive through and you get what you want. That it's not this immediacy of like buy with one click, etc. And yeah, so I feel like there are definitely cultural societal factors that seem to lead to an expectation or this desire that all of life could be controlled and immediate in that way and that we could get what we want when we want it. So it's hard when life doesn't always work like that.

Darby Strickland (07:55.643)

I think you’re pointing to what it reveals about us is that we're limited. And oftentimes in our world, we don't even butt up against that because we can make so many things happen and so quickly. But in reality, we are limited and we don't like that feeling, and we're not used to ordering our worlds around that fact. Whether it's in parenting, getting stuck in traffic—there's so many things that are beyond our control, which feels uncomfortable.

I think for me the call to be patient exposes a lot of expectations that I have that are unspoken and often unrealized. I think sometimes I can think almost instinctively of the Lord like an umpire or referee in sports, where as long as the calls are going my way or I agree with them or the game is going according to my plan, then I'm happy with it. But once there's a call that gets made that I don't agree with or that causes me inconvenience or doesn't seem to be leading me to the kind of like victory or good outcome that I want, then in my mind and heart, it's like something has gone wrong. And it introduces that sense of inconvenience and speed bump in the way when I wanted the highway just to be smooth. And I sometimes realize how ungrateful I've been for a smooth path that I've been on when there just is some jog or turn in the path or something I have to navigate and be patient with. And so for me, it can reveal expectations that I didn't even realize that I had.

Esther Liu (09:41.142)

There's definitely this element of control in this, how much I want to control my world and my life, how much I want to be able to control myself and the speed of my own spiritual growth, sanctification, how fast I can get work done, how productive I can be in a day. And if I don't meet that expectation, like you were saying, Gunner, I get impatient with myself. Or how much I want to control how other people grow and how they grow and the person that they become, because who they are feels inconvenient or causes friction with what I want and what I hope for for a smooth relationship. Or even control over suffering, that I wish I could cut it short, I wish I could get relief sooner, wish I could get the answer that I've been looking for sooner. So much of that is like, I just wanna control my life and my world, I wanna have control over all those things and when I'm butting up against that I don't actually control my universe, that's where the impatience and the discontentment that often comes with impatience can arise for me. So I feel like that word is important for my own journey of processing through patience.

Esther, your comments were reminding me of the famous part of the Israelites’ slavery in Egypt where they have to make bricks without straw. And this sense of like this limitless demand, like we're going to treat you like you have no limits, you have to do more with less. And it's this feature of bondage actually. And I think that this sense of impatience, this demand to feel and be limitless, to be completely in control of the outcome of the production line of what comes out of a day, what comes out of a week, what comes out of a situation, there is a form of bondage in that, that it seems God uses periods of prolonged patience to chip away at, which I'm very thankful for.

There's so many reasons we could talk about in terms of why patience is hard, but let's turn our attention for a minute to, How is patience good? What does God produce in us through the exercise of patience, and what does patience produce?

Darby Strickland (12:04.755)

The first thing that runs in my mind is the fruit of the Spirit. Even as we're talking, the children's song is running through my mind. Because I do think it produces many or all of those things. It's even on that list. It's just so rich. If we're talking about patience as entrusting the Lord with our future or being able to lean into the unknown or giving over what I can produce to him, there's so much trusting that it requires. So much, yeah, it just spills out into how we love other people. It takes us out of ourselves and gives us a whole different perspective, which I really just . . . it's fascinating to think even in the ordinary moments. I was thinking yesterday we were playing board games as a family, and someone who shall not be named just was taking forever with their turn, and I had to make dinner. And what was more important there? Was it letting this other person enjoy the game, or was it me getting dinner on the table? There's just so many choices in these micro-moments of choosing to see other people instead of where you want to end up or where you want to go or what has to be accomplished. So I just think it really helps us love other people well.

That idea, Darby, of like getting through something to get to something else reminds me of my years in college ministry, where one of the most common things we would all talk about as students, especially in like a traditional freshman and sophomore year, was to get through all of your gen ed classes or knock out all your gen ed classes so that you could get to your major classes, the things you really wanted to take, the things that you were really there to grow in and learn. And it was interesting because then sometimes people would get to their later years and then start talking about like senioritis. And so now you're wanting to get to the next thing. And I think C. S. Lewis has a quote along different lines, but he talks about how sometimes people are so trying to see through everything that they don't actually see something. And I think so often we can be so tempted to move through the thing we're in middle of and get to the next thing. And then we get there and we actually just start unknowingly trying to move through that thing to get to the next thing, on our way toward just hastening this life that's already so brief, rather than being able to, as you said, enjoy what others are enjoying and allowing them to in this game, and then knowing that dinner will come at the appropriate time. And not to say that's a simple thing to do, but it's a beautiful micro-illustration, as you said, of some other larger principles.

Darby Strickland (14:53.663)

Which I think another fruit of that is, the way you're describing it is, patience allows us to be present and take joy in the moment. Particularly, even in a traffic jam, there's ways to maybe not celebrate the fact that you're stuck in traffic, but there's ways that you can actually use it to slow down and to notice things differently than if you're just whizzing by.

Esther Liu (15:27.146)

I do feel like with patience, along those lines, it's so much easier to fixate on the things that aren't there that you want to be there, rather than to see all the things that God is doing and giving in that moment that are good. Elisabeth Elliot has a way of saying, I'm going to butcher the quote, but something about like, in the midst of a lot of not givens, there are these beautiful givens. But how easy it is to miss all the givens in the midst of the not givens, because we're so fixated on our narrow sense of what we want and what we desire in that moment. Just reminded of that as you were sharing, Darby.

I was on a couple of planes recently that were both significantly delayed. And so in one we were sitting there waiting for an hour, hour and a half to take off. And then the other, we were sitting there for an hour waiting for a gate to become available as we had landed. And I remember consciously starting to wrestle with, where am I wanting to be and how am I wanting this to be different right now? And why is it so hard for me to adjust to where I am now and to take the opportunity that is in front of me here with all the things that are available to me to do. I can sit and read peacefully. How often do I long for a little time to read peacefully? I have that right now. It's just not what I planned. And so hard to be patient. Or all the interesting people around me who I could engage in conversation that could probably really use a good distraction right now as well from what we're facing. But it just struck me that when a situation surprises me, it's not what I expected or wanted, there's something else I'm wanting on the other side of this. The deep struggle to, as you said, Darby, be patient and enjoy the gifts that God has given as well as to invest in and be present in the relationships that God has provided for me in that moment.

Darby Strickland (17:27.487)

Patience to me feels a lot like waiting, and waiting is hard. That's just a very simple way to say it, but waiting is really hard because there's a lot of unknowns and we want the outcome. So in the waiting, there can be so much anxiety growing in my heart or irritation that I'm stuck having to be not having something accomplished. And again, I just think that's just . . . it helps me focus on, like you guys are saying in different ways, what is my heart wanting? It often wants not to be inconvenienced and it just wants to serve itself. Yeah, I think the opposite of patience is impatience that can actually look like anger. But actually I often think about it as it's just this hyper-selfishness. Like we're not aware of all the other things around us when we're choosing impatience. But when we choose to be patient, actually saying, give me eyes to see what you need me to see here. I've told myself many times, it's like a movie in slow motion. You've seen those fantastic action movies when they slow everything down. It's actually more fascinating to see what God is doing when we're able to absorb it in slow motion. And that's just been a helpful thing for myself to keep me from either hopelessness or anxiety or anger. To say I need to actually, I too need to slow down and look differently, because the perspective I'm bringing to the moment, it's crushing me, but it's probably crushing others as well.

Esther Liu (19:19.67)

I was just processing that word too, Darby. The word perspective that you just used. I feel like if I think about what God has produced in me through seasons that required patience, I feel like it entailed some degree of expanding my narrow perspective. One of those being I had a very narrow perspective of what I wanted out of my life, out of what I thought would be a good direction for my life, what would be best for my life. And it's through those seasons of patience of whether that be prolonged suffering, unanswered prayers, things not happening according to the schedule and the timetable that I had in mind for my own life. Time and time again, the Lord has shown how his ways truly are better. And if I had life my way and my timing when I wanted to have it, how much life would be different. But I'm so grateful for his timing and his ways, but that often so comes in hindsight. But I feel like those seasons where God kind of invited me to have patience and to wait on him became these testimonies that I now can look back on and see his goodness and how his wisdom truly does exceed my own. So there's this expanded perspective of I thought my life had to go this way in order to be happy or content or satisfying. And the Lord expanded my perspective to be like, actually there's all this goodness that took place in my way of doing it, in my timetable that wasn't in accordance to yours. And I think the other way that I see the fruit of like an expanded perspective is when it comes to patience with other people, because when they're different or when I feel like there's friction or the way that they do things just goes against how I would want them to do things, there's a way in which my narrow perspective is, I think my way is best. Like, I think I know what is best in the situation of how to handle this and how to go about this, and how much of that journey of patience with others is actually expanding my perspective to see that there's actually so much beauty in differences and actually those places of friction can become and be transformed into places where it's actually complementary, where we can actually live out being the body of Christ, that we're not all eyes and we're not all supposed to be ears or feet, that we can all be different and that that actually enriches our experience of life and advancing God's kingdom. And so, yeah, I just think of the word like expanded perspective keeps coming to mind when I think of what the fruit of patience can bring about.

Darby Strickland (22:12.947)

That's a really good insight. I can think of one year in particular where I was homeschooling. I have a child that has special needs. So they definitely thought differently, learned differently, didn't attend to tasks. I remember at the end of the year, like reflecting, you know, talking to the evaluator and she's like, what happened in your home this year? I was like, I learned patience. But it was just so, she was asking me about all the learning goals and I realized, actually I think that was more important than all the learning that happened in the home. Because it set the trajectory of the home so much differently, particularly for this child to then flourish instead of keep having him hit marks or make my timeline to be done by 1:00 so we could go here or there or whatever. And it just really struck me. It was like, wow, the Lord really had to work hard. I'm a productive person. I like my schedule at the beginning of the year. I had charts and I knew what every week was gonna look like. And it was really just far from that. Yeah, but yeah, as I tear up here as I always do, when I think about it. But it just, yeah, I would say it allowed my children to flourish. Yeah, and I just think that's so important, whether it's in my marriage or other relationships. I think when we have our own ideas, or our agendas, or our timelines, I really do think we miss people.

Gunner Gundersen (23:50.242)

Thank you for sharing that, Darby. Yeah, I love just that deep humility that recognizes that you had plans and things that you wanted to build into your family that were good and well-intended. And yet God determined to build certain things into you and therefore into your family through that process that required so much patience. And I think about that with my own journey in parenting as well and really wrestling with what my expectations are of my kids, of myself, and of the Lord and how those were all tangled up together and how the Lord over time is still very much in the process of teaching me so much more about his character and his fatherly love, his patience toward me as I learn how to, each day in different ways, parent my own children, and how I know that I wouldn't be developing in some of the areas that he's developing me in without the call to patience and even embrace some of these differences that at the beginning I don't have any muscle memory for in how to respond or to be helpful. And yet through the development of that, it's as you said, Esther, this broadening of perspective, really a bigger vision of reality instead of my narrower view that can actually steal a lot of joy over time and steal the gift of people from like my kind of enjoyment bank, if you will.

Gunner Gundersen (25:47.872)

If patience is this beneficial and helpful in ways we've talked about and many ways we haven't had time to talk about, can we just talk for a minute about how do we cultivate patience? How do we cultivate patience?

Darby Strickland (26:09.927)

I think one way is just to talk about how it's hard, right? Because as we're talking about how it's hard and how we're lamenting to the Lord what it's costing us, we're growing an awareness of our own heart. We're asking the Lord to be our helper instead of us trying to be the solution-solver and move things along all the way. And so part of cultivating patience is repenting of our impatience, but also lamenting about why it's just so hard to wait. There's really legitimate reasons and places we get squeezed that are hurtful and harmful. So I think talking about that, being honest about that, growing in patience isn't, it's not like it's easy when you get a gold star at the end of the day. It's work. And yeah, I think just talking to the Lord about that is really important, being honest with where we are.

Esther Liu (27:11.144)

I certainly feel like along with that part of the process of patience is being able to look back at times when it's clear to me now that God's timing was best or how some of life's delays for me actually turned out to be evidences of his goodness and his wisdom that exceeds my own. Being able to have a small, gradually accumulating bank of those testimonies helps me today. The act of remembering and recalling and saying, maybe God, you're up to something good here too, again, in ways that I also can't see right now in this moment, but help me to trust that you are the same God you were however many years ago, that you are the same God today, that you're still somehow working out your good purposes in my life today, even if I don't understand your timing, your ways, your delays.

Darby Strickland (28:24.799)

I'll just throw out another idea of just acceptance that most of life is actually waiting. I think if you were to go through your day and you think about how many times you're waiting and just to recognize that God's up to something in the gaps. You know, they’re opportunities for him to be at work in us, but also on behalf of us. So I think it's just noticing how much we wait or how many stories in Scripture talk about waiting. See how many people who struggled with fertility and waiting. Really significant. Even the disciples waiting for Jesus to be resurrected, it didn't happen immediately. God is at work in the waiting, and asking the Lord to help you see that and as you're saying in retrospect, I think is really helpful. But even just being aware of there's probably something he's at work in me or on my behalf as I wait, just having eyes to acknowledge it and expect it, anticipate it instead of feel thrown off by it. It's actually something that's a regular part of our lives. So accepting that's the reality.

Gunner Gundersen (29:42.1)

I've often been struck by stories in Scripture where you can actually comb through them a little bit and do some of the math and see how long these different events took place to kind of unfold or be resolved or to materialize. It's really striking and I just feel it differently. And then you can see some of these things, as you said, Darby, where God is at work in the gaps, I think, as you said. One experience of this that we've had recently is that we were kind of without a home for about a year. We had a place to be with family, which we were very grateful for, but we also weren't in a place of our own. And we're wondering why the different opportunities that we thought we would have or why some of the offers we were making weren't being accepted or why it wasn't materializing. We actually have now moved into our home. And one of the striking things about it is that this home was owned by a man for the last year and he only had it for this year. And during that year, he mainly finished out two rooms in the basement. And one of those rooms in the basement is now kind of a home office for me. And it's this incredible picture actually in micro-form of during this period of waiting where we didn't know what the Lord was doing, he was literally preparing a place for us. He was preparing this particular basement for me in a way that cost him and not me, it could cost this gentleman and not me to build and to prepare. And I know there's so many other things that he was preparing, not only for us, but I think even more importantly in us during that time. And so to see what God is doing in those periods is so helpful. I know for me, it's tempting to often want to get to a vista where I can look forward and see deep into my tangible future. And I've realized oftentimes what God does is he brings me to vistas where I can look back and see what he has done and then trust that his faithfulness that did those things, and much more I can't even see looking back, that same faithfulness is writing my future already and has written my future. So helpful to me.

Darby Strickland (31:59.615)

And as you’re saying that, Scripture has that same perspective, is that we look back and remember God's faithfulness, and we still are called to anticipating what we're all waiting for, and that's when everything is going to be made right. So it's like we live in that, our everyday lives of being stuck in traffic, like am I going to get to the meeting of the time? Is this person going be angry with me because I'm late? You know, God's faithfulness, and also the anticipation when everything will be complete and done and perfect and without pain. Like all those micro-moments I think actually point us to this larger spiritual reality that we live within. And so we wait.

Gunner Gundersen (32:55.502)

I want to close with a verse that just jumps out at me from time to time, and it certainly does at the end of this conversation. James 5, verse 10 and 11 says, “An example of suffering and patience, brothers, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.” Thanks so much for the conversation, and thanks to all of you who've listened to this episode of Where Life & Scripture Meet. I do pray and hope that God grants you the gift of patience and the gift of perspective to see the good that he's doing in the midst of the waiting.