I’ll be honest with you — my family would not describe me as the most patient man in the room.
And they’d be right.
There’s a specific kind of impatience that doesn’t look like a temper tantrum. It doesn’t explode. It just tightens. Gets quiet and sharp. Shows up in your tone before it shows up in your words.
That’s mine.
When I’m explaining something and the other person isn’t getting it — especially when it feels obvious to me — something shifts inside. A low frustration starts building. And depending on the situation, that frustration can turn into something I’m not proud of.
Here’s the part I had to face honestly: most of the time, the thing I’m explaining feels obvious because I do it every day. I’ve done it so many times that I’ve completely forgotten what it felt like not to know it. I’m not teaching from where they are. I’m teaching from where I am.
And then I wonder why they’re not keeping up.
That’s not a patience problem. That’s a pride problem wearing patience’s clothes.
So I prayed about it.
I asked God to give me more patience. To grow it in me. To help me respond better when my frustration wanted to take over.
What I expected was a feeling. A kind of inner peace that would kick in automatically when the moment came.
What God did instead was put me in situations.
At home. At work. Real moments with real people that required the exact thing I’d been praying for. No shortcut. No download. Just opportunity after opportunity to either practice patience or fail at it.
And then — He flipped the script entirely.
He put me on the other side.
Someone losing patience with me. Frustrated because I wasn’t understanding something they thought was completely obvious. Their delivery sharp. Their tone tight.
And suddenly I felt exactly what I’d been putting on other people.
The confusion of not grasping something someone else finds simple. The way frustration in someone’s voice makes you shut down instead of open up. The shrinking feeling of sensing that someone thinks less of you because you don’t already know what they know.
It stopped me cold.
Not because it felt bad — although it did — but because I recognized it immediately.
I’ve made people feel this way.
That was the mirror God held up. And I couldn’t look away from it.
“Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” — Ephesians 4:2 NIV
Bearing with one another.
I used to read that as passive. Like patience just meant tolerating people until they caught up.
But it’s not passive at all. It’s one of the most active things you can do. It means staying present. Staying kind. Staying engaged — even when it’s taking longer than you think it should. Even when part of you wants to move on.
And it starts with one honest question:
Am I actually trying to help this person understand — or am I just expecting them to?
Those are not the same thing. Expecting someone to understand puts the burden entirely on them. Helping them understand puts the work on you. It requires you to slow down, check your approach, and ask whether the way you’re explaining something is actually clear — or only clear to someone who already knows what you know.
When my frustration shows, it doesn’t move things forward. It shuts people down. It makes them feel small. And a person who feels small stops trying to understand — they just start trying to survive the conversation.
That’s not what I want. Not at home. Not at work. Not anywhere.
What I actually want is to bring people up.
To close the gap. To be the kind of man who makes understanding feel possible instead of making people feel foolish for not already having it.
That’s servant leadership.
Not barking orders. Not making someone feel deficient because they don’t have your experience or your knowledge. But humbling yourself enough to meet people where they are — and walking patiently with them toward where they need to be.
There’s a difference between a leader who demands and a leader who develops. One creates compliance. The other creates growth. One makes people perform out of fear of your frustration. The other makes people rise because they feel safe enough to try.
I want to be the second kind of man.
“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.” — Matthew 20:26 NIV
Jesus didn’t shout instructions from a distance and expect people to figure it out. He came down. He walked with people. He explained things more than once, in more than one way, without making anyone feel beneath Him for not already knowing.
That’s the standard. And every time I think about it — it convicts me.
And none of this works without communication.
You can have the right information and still deliver it the wrong way. You can know exactly what someone needs to hear and still make them feel worse for not already knowing it. Tone matters. Timing matters. Your body language matters. How you say something lands just as hard as what you say.
Patient communication isn’t just slower talking. It’s genuinely trying to connect. It’s adjusting your approach when something isn’t landing. It’s asking does that make sense — and actually meaning it.
It’s the difference between informing someone and investing in them.
And when people feel invested in — when they feel respected instead of corrected, lifted instead of lectured — something changes. They lean in. They open up. They stop bracing for your frustration and start actually engaging with what you’re saying.
That’s when real understanding happens.
That’s when real relationships deepen.
“A person’s wisdom yields patience; it is to one’s glory to overlook an offense.” — Proverbs 19:11 NIV
Wisdom yields patience.
Not willpower. Not white-knuckling your way through a conversation. Not repeating yourself louder and hoping volume does what clarity couldn’t.
Wisdom. The kind that steps outside yourself long enough to see the situation from where the other person is standing. The kind that chooses humility over being right. The kind that remembers — you didn’t always know what you know now either. Someone had patience with you once. Someone explained it more than once for your sake.
Pass that forward.
I still work on this. Ask my family — they’ll tell you.
But I’m more aware now than I used to be. And awareness is where change starts.
When that familiar tightness rises — that why don’t they see this feeling — I try to stop and ask myself a few honest questions:
Have I actually explained this clearly, or have I just assumed they should already know it?
Am I approaching this in a way that invites understanding — or demands it?
Am I leading right now — or just reacting?
God didn’t hand me patience when I prayed for it. He gave me something better. He gave me a mirror. He put me on the receiving end of my own impatience and let me feel what it does to a person.
That changed me more than any feeling ever could have.
Because the goal was never just to be less frustrated.
The goal is to become the kind of man people feel safe learning from. Safe enough to say I don’t understand without fearing your reaction. Safe enough to ask again without feeling like a burden.
That kind of patience isn’t weakness.
That’s the strongest thing in the room.
Patience isn’t something God hands you.
It’s something He builds into you — one humbling moment at a time.
And the man who learns it doesn’t just grow himself.
He becomes someone others can actually grow around.
