Janna Faith Van Gelderen: Hello, I’m Janna Faith. 

Anna Faith Gilmore: And I’m Anna Faith. And welcome to episode five of Faith Talks. And today we have with us Mrs. Laura Sanderlin. She’s actually a close friend of Janna’s family and she traveled with them for a couple of years. And she’s married, she’s a mother of four, and her family is on the path to being missionaries in Africa, I think Cameroon. And growing up she also encountered several trials which she will share with us today and we just thought it would be really fitting to have her share her story and just how it relates to our topic today. 

Janna: So speaking of our topic today, we are continuing our study of the fruit of the spirit. So today what we’re going to be discussing is long suffering.

Anna: And today we just really want our listeners to not just hear about long suffering, but to experience long suffering. So we decided that we’re going to change your podcast length just for today to a normal length of a message, which is about one to two hours, just so you can really fully understand what long suffering means. 

Janna: And we do just want to let you guys know that when you tune into our podcast, we see and we know. So if you shut us off right now, we know who you are and some of you guys we even know where you live.

Anna: Just kidding–all of that. 

Janna: That was a good one though. 

Anna: So hopefully it will be our normal length of whatever, our normal length is. Yeah, like 10 or 15 minutes. 

Janna: Well, we better actually get going into the topic or it might not be such a joke. So let’s look at long suffering. So first of all, let’s look at what does it even mean? What does that mean? 

Anna: So I was looking at a couple of definitions, just searching it on the web, and here are a couple that I came up with. One is having or showing patience in spite of troubles, especially those troubles caused by other people. Another one was forbearing patience. Another, patiently enduring lasting offense or hardship. 

Janna:Those are good. I think a lot of it too has an element of time with it. And I think so many times you might be going through a trial or something and you’re doing okay at the beginning. You’re trusting the Lord. But then after a while it’s really easy to get frustrated and to doubt God. And I actually was talking to two different ladies this week who were trusting God and doing great. But then just because the trial has been going so long they’ve kind of given up and it’s easy to look at God and say you know “I see how you’re using this in my life but I think I’ve learned the lesson by now you can end the trial.” I was reading In Mountain Rain by J. O. Fraser. I’ll just quote him right here and he says “Why should I in the hot close rainy season look for the dry months when things are more pleasant all around? Didn’t God intend for me to put up with the discomfort of heat? Why should I look forward to the time when I can speak Chinese fluently. Didn’t God intend to serve as an apprenticeship to learning the language? Why should I look forward to more time for myself? Though it’s very natural to have those thoughts, I do not feel that they are scriptural.”

 And I was just struck by the fact that he was just convicted about always wanting things to be easier and not wanting to go through those trials and that long suffering. 

Anna: Yeah, and I think long suffering can be applied in many areas, just kind of like the story, Janna. But I think that one of the biggest ones that I know I struggle with and probably many of us do is just the trials or hardships in relationships. And I think relationships are just, they’re an everyday encounter. So when you have a certain relationship that you really struggle with, you really have to be long-suffering and you have to learn how to be long-suffering in that relationship because it’s ongoing and it’s not just this one one-time trial, but it happens over a long period of time. 

Just moving on to another topic on long-suffering, Mrs. Sanderlin, what would you do when the same person keeps doing the same thing to hurt or offend you? 

Laura Sanderlin: Hmm, that’s a good question. When I think of long-suffering, I just, I like pictures and you know, mental pictures to work with. So I think of a short or a long fuse. So if you think of that, that cord that’s leading to the gunpowder, and you know, if it’s really short, then it’ll explode right away, or if it’s really long. It could take hours before it explodes or whatever. But as you’re dealing with the idea of over and over, that person is doing the same thing over and over, I think of Matthew 18:22. Peter says, how many times do I have to forgive? And the answer is 70 times seven, giving us that idea of this is unlimited. This is not–Peter was kind of looking for a break off point, like, okay, I’ve reached my max. I’ve had it up to here. I’m done with that person. You know, if you do that one more time to me, I’m done with you. And that’s, we can all relate to that. But the idea of the unlimited is because God is unlimited. His long suffering never runs out. He does not have a break-off point. He does not have a point where we’ve done something to him so many times that he’s done with us and he’s reached the max.

Our fuse is very short. I mean, some of us might have a longer one than others, but none of us have a fuse as long as Christ’s would go, which is unending. And so it’s not a matter of making ourselves better or saying, “I’m going to try to go longer before I blow up” or “I’m going to try to let them do that to me, you know, one more time.” It’s the idea that my fuse is short and I run out. My long suffering runs out every single time, but His doesn’t.

Janna: Now I know some people have asked me like, “Okay, I’m just not that type to be long-suffering. It’s not my personality to be like that. Like maybe you’re like that, but that’s just not me. God didn’t make me long-suffering. I’m not that type. What would you say to that?”

Laura: Well, I would say it’s easy to use your personality as an excuse or your temperament as an excuse to say, “Well, I just have a short fuse.” It’s like saying to God, “You made me this way, so you’ll understand if I can’t obey in this area.” And the truth is, it’s not something, again, like I said, that we have to be like. Maybe we’re born with this or we’re not born with this or we have to work on it and make ourselves more like this. It’s not so much that. It has to be God, you know. 

In I Corinthians 13 you have the love chapter. It says charity suffereth long and is kind. Verse five is not easily provoked. That’s again the idea of the short fuse, easily provoked. It takes hardly anything to get you to lose your temper or to lose patience. But true love has a long fuse. If you just think that true love has a long fuse and it requires God’s love, not mine. Mine always runs out. And it again, it’s not you trying to make yourself more into that kind of a person. It’s the idea of walking in the spirit because long-suffering is the fruit of the spirit like you’re talking about. And when I’m trying to think of walking in the spirit, it can be a difficult concept to kind of wrap your head around. But what works for me is just thinking of these three words, constant conscious dependence. That’s what just works for me. Constant conscious dependence. And if I have that attitude towards God and saying, “I need you, I need your long-suffering, I need it constantly, and I am consciously asking you and depending on you for it,” It’ll be there when you need it. 

Janna: And I can, even going back to the question that you just asked, Janna, I can even personally testify to how this type of thinking is not helpful or even true. And personally, my personality can sometimes feel the pressure more and I can tend to worry or respond wrong in pressure situations. And I don’t have that long-suffering or calm, quiet disposition in and of myself. So I can totally relate to this. And I’ve seen how it hasn’t been helpful this little box of my personality and just like, “Well, I won’t ever change this is just how I am.” But God has just really shown me that I can actually, through his power, I can respond right and he can change me and he can actually give me a new personality that’s Jesus flowing through me and I can respond right through his power. And honestly, I know it sounds funny, but I’m really thankful that I have this more worried type personality because I really can easily tell when I am not trusting God and when I am trusting myself. So even if some of you girls listening feel that way, don’t be discouraged because God wants to change you and give you long-suffering like you’ve never experienced before and He will change your personality. 

Janna: Wow, I think that’s really good. Thank you both for that. Now, just turning a little bit of a different direction, in my dad’s ministry traveling, he always says the number one problem he deals with, and I found this to be true, traveling over the years is bitterness. And I know he’s even mentioned that a book should be written on this topic. 

Now Mrs. Sanderlin, I know you’ve had a journey kind of in this area. Would you mind sharing with us your story and how you feel like the bitterness has a connection with the longsuffering? 

Laura: Sure. I was able to share this a lot with teenagers when I traveled and I found that it was just a good connection point. A lot of kids that had gone through something similar could relate. So I’m very burdened about it that other people come to the same freedom that I have found because it’s changed my life. But basically as I was growing up, my parents had a very troubled marriage. They did not get along very well and yet we were a Christian family. We went to church. We were very active in the church. A lot of people looked up to our family and thought we were great kids, well behaved kids and just a good all-around family. And yet at home, there were a lot of difficulties between my mom and dad. Mostly my mom did not treat my dad very well. And as a kid, you know, you kind of brush it off. You kind of, you know, it bothers you, but not too deeply. I know there was one time in particular, they had some kind of an argument and my mom had put us all to bed and then locked the door, basically locking my dad out. And I was laying there and I knew she’d lock the door and I was almost asleep and I heard a tapping at the window and my dad had kind of crawled through the bushes and was tapping on my bedroom window crying asking me to let him in. And you know as a little girl that’s very traumatic and I was laying there. I loved my dad. I wanted to let him in, but yet I was afraid of my mom and so I just kind of laid there and then I heard the policeman come and try to get my mom to answer the door. And I think my dad spent the night at the police station. But anyway, that was a very traumatic experience, something that I kept with me, just kind of tucked away. Just any time the memory came up, it was very sad and very hurtful. And there were just different times, also, my mom would just really criticize me or tell me I was dumb or… things like that. And she has, you know, we have a good relationship and now it’s been dealt with. But those kinds of things just really affected me. As I got into junior high, kind of into the age of many of you listening, I was in junior high, high school, it started to really bother me and put a wedge between me and my mom. And I became very, very bitter. And wishing I’d see other girls with their moms and they were like best friends and I’d think, “oh I just I wish I had that” or “I wish my mom was normal” or you know “I wish my mom was nicer” whatever. It’s just very bitter about my home situation and bitter I guess about the fact that people thought something of us that was not true that we had a good reputation but we really didn’t deserve it. 

I heard a message on Hebrews 12, the 15th and 16th verse there, and it hit me, the progression there about, it says, “looking diligently, lest any man fail of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you and thereby many be defiled, lest there be any fornicator or profane person”. And what happened to me is I developed this appetite for dirty things and I did not know where that came from because I’d never really struggled with that. But all of a sudden I had a job at the library. I was looking at dirty books. I would sneak and look at bad things or if I was babysitting I’d have time with the TV, just me and the TV. The kids were in bed. And I was just, I just had this curiosity and this appetite and this pleasure in dirty things. And it didn’t hit me until I heard this passage, the connection between the bitterness and what I was struggling with in viewing and music. I would listen to wrong music really low up in my room. And I’m ashamed of all that now and I’m sad about it, but I didn’t ever make that connection until I heard the message and I was like, wow, I don’t want to be that person. I realized what it was doing to me. I also had a very influential music pastor in my life who sat me down and he said, you are letting this ruin you and God has a beautiful plan for your life and you’re going to miss it if you continue on this path. There with my arms crossed with that stonewall face but what he said to me it just made me want that and it made me so afraid to miss out the beautiful plan that God had for my life and I realized I did not want this bitterness to eat away and destroy me. So God really used that passage also the Matthew 18 parable of The man that comes asking, give me more time to pay the debt, right? And the king says, I’ll just, he had mercy on him and forgave him all. And then he goes out and demands that this person pay him this tiny little amount. And God really showed me through that passage that I have been forgiven of everything that God has forgiven me completely immediately. He holds nothing against me. If I’ve been treated that way, then I have to forgive. I have no choice but to forgive because I have been forgiven. And also I growing up, I had a brother who was mentally handicapped. And so in a different way, too, learning to be long-suffering with his situation, just everything being slower. And if I was asked to help him with something, it would take a very long time. And I think. Even in that way, if you have maybe a sibling that’s special needs or someone in your life that you have to take care of, you need that long suffering too, just to give and to give and to give and for that never to run out is a work that God does in your heart. And I’m so thankful, just to wrap that up, I’m thankful that I came through that journey of bitterness, that God freed me from it. Because now I’m married and now when there are hurts and there are things that are hard to forgive, it’s like I know how to deal with it biblically because I learned it in my home. So if you’re struggling with something in your home, in a relationship, being long-suffering, being forgiving, ask God to free you from that and release you from that now because you do not want to take that into your future. You don’t want to take that into your future marriage. 

Janna: Well thank you so much for sharing. That was very impactful. I especially like just how you were thankful for the trial and just even seeing how it grew you even for your future. And we’re just gonna look at a couple things here, just talking about the question of why do we need to have long suffering? Is it just kind of a waste? Is it something we need to get through, something we need to cope with and deal with? Or is long suffering actually something that’s going to change us as a person? 

Anna: Yeah, I think one of the main reasons when I’m just thinking of long suffering and why God allows those trials in our lives I think one of the biggest reason is he just wants us to experience his love and think of the verse 2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise as some men count slackness But is long suffering toward usward not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance”. And I think God allows those trials into our life to give us an opportunity to understand his love in a way we could never understand before and it allows us to understand God’s long-suffering towards us. And I just think that’s so amazing that he opens, he gives you trials, but if you can respond in the right way, and even just as Mrs. Sanderlin shared how she did respond in the right way, and how God just opened up all these areas that she probably wouldn’t have been able to understand why God did that, but looking back now, she does understand. And it’s like a gift that he gives to us in those areas. 

Janna: I think one thing, we were talking about this earlier, Just a personal kind of example that ties into it. My mom would have me practice, well, Mrs. Sanderlin knows this. She was my piano teacher for many years, well, a couple years. But my mom would make me practice and work with me. And she would say, “someday you’re going to understand this. Someday you’re going to be grateful”. But I didn’t really appreciate that my mom was long suffering to me until I became a music teacher and was working with these kids on practicing and having to be long suffering with them. And then I look back at my mom and I’m like, “Wow mom! Thank you so much for being long-suffering to me”.

And I think it’s this similar way with God, you know, God’s long-suffering to us and sometimes we don’t even see it Until God puts those trials or maybe difficult circumstances relationships in our lives where we see we’re having to be long-suffering with others and then we look to God and we’re like Wow, thank you so much for being long-suffering with me. And this is just like you said, you know what God has forgiven us for.

Anna: I think another area too, just why God has given us the opportunity to have long suffering, is just to break our will. And I feel like, especially if you grow up in a Christian home, sometimes, a lot of times it’s easy to just think you’re a good kid. But God just gives you so many, and I think in general with all humans, he gives, he just gives so many trials to break that will down so you can actually be kind of like a horse, the illustration of a horse where, you know, the horse has to be broken in order to be someone to ride on it and it to be used properly and I think that’s the same way in a spiritual walk God has to break you so you can be used how he wants to use you and so I think that’s just another way um just why even with the long suffering. 

Janna: It’s kind of like the zero one hundred principle. You know God’s bringing you to that point of zero so he can show you that he is the 100. Any thoughts in this Mrs. Sanderlin just as far as why God brings these trials or why long suffering is important. 

Laura: Yeah, I mean it’s definitely an opportunity to let him live through you and I kind of call it a Jesus response. When somebody is constant, when there’s a constant kind of a trial or maybe a person that’s just, you know, doing the same, the same thing over and over. What they need is a Jesus response. They need Jesus in you to respond. They don’t need your short, um, your short fuse. They don’t need your, you know, your, your reaction. They need Jesus in you. And every time they attack or offend or hurt, it’s an opportunity for them to get a Jesus response. So it’s very powerful. 

Janna: That is just one more thought to share here. James 1:4 has been a huge conviction in my life, but it’s just saying, but let patience have her perfect work that you may be perfect and entire wanting nothing and I remember reading somewhere that patience is something that changes you not just something to get through It’s not just simply like an enduring or a waiting period like if I can just get done with this then I get on to life but it’s actually sometimes the biggest time of growth are those waiting periods and those times you have to grow in long-suffering. And it’s interesting a couple of verses later in that passage James tells the believers to ask in faith nothing wavering and why would they be wavering well they’re probably in the middle of a trial like he challenged them before to be patient and they were probably tempted to ask why or ask when but instead in the very middle of your trials, God wants to hear you and answer you and for you to have that faith response. So we just thought that was neat with it being faith talks, the connection between faith and long-suffering because long- suffering really just is an exercise of faith. And then as far as application for the listeners, do you have any thoughts of just practical things and action steps that they can take in this area? 

Laura: Yeah, if you’re dealing with a particularly difficult person or something that’s just going on and on, it’s a matter of crying out to God and saying, I need you to do this in me. I don’t have it in and of myself. But to remember these two things, God loves them as much as he loves me. That will change the way you view people. He loves them as much as he loves me. And then number two, God already forgave them for what they’re doing to you. When he was on the cross, the offense that you’re now receiving, he received that offense on the cross. So if he was willing to forgive them then, and he was willing to actually die for them then, at that moment, then how can I refuse to forgive this person. How can I refuse to stick with this person and have patience towards them? So those two things have just really helped me a lot. But it’s just a cry of dependence. “I don’t have this, but you do when you’re in me.” 

Janna: That’s really good. So just in closing, just remembering those two things that Mrs. Sanderlin just talked about and also just remember that when you are in the middle of those long trials, God is right there and he’s orchestrating everything for good and he just he wants to change you into the vessel that he wants you to be. So it’s not a negative thing. It’s actually a positive thing. God’s working in your life. 

So choose faith and long-suffering, which are characteristics of Jesus. Choose Jesus this week and this month as you encounter the hardships and God will do the impossible in your life. And remember, faith doesn’t just talk – Faith walks.”