Fruit of the Spirit @ Work – Patience

There’s an old saying that “you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family”. I would add to that “or your colleagues” (usually anyway). Most of us have colleagues who try our patience more than others. How are we as Christians to handle them?

According to Galatians 5:22, the fruit of the Spirit includes patience (sometimes translated long-suffering). Since I’m convinced this applies at work just as much as at home or church, I should expect to have more patience with “difficult” boss, colleagues and/or employees than I used to when I gave less free reign to the Spirit. How is this working out in practice? Pretty inconsistently to be honest. As with many of the issues in the workplace, perspective seems to be very important. Just a few things that I think help when we’re “controlled by the Spirit” as Paul puts it in Romans 8 (especially verses 5-10).

1. Patience has a lot to do with taking the long view of things, which is just what the Holy Spirit allows us to do – seeing things from God’s perspective, and in His timing. Our success at work (whether from a Kingdom or business perspective) depends upon our long-term relationships with all the people we work with. Patience sets aside short-term irritations in favor of longer-term working relationships.
2. Our focus is on what God is doing wherever we’re working, and the fact that He is choosing to do it through us and other people. That makes the petty annoyances and barriers to progress much less significant to me.
3. God clearly loves and values and cares for the person we find difficult – to the degree that the fruit of the Spirit is in evidence in us, we can start to love and value them in the same way. When we love the person enough, their actions become less significant.
4. If we have the humility to acknowledge our own failings, we discover that others have to be patient with us too. One thing I’ve discovered is that the attributes of others that annoy me the most turn out to be things that are true of me! (For example, I have a terrible habit of interrupting others in meetings when I’m pumped up about something – and yet I can get really impatient with people who do it to me!)

I’m sure there are other reasons that the fruit of patience is of enormous value in the workplace. The other thing is how we exercise it – and like all the Spirit’s fruit, it has to do with maturing in our faith and relationship with God so that Romans 8 more and more describes who we are and how we live. But that’s another, much bigger topic …