Hi, my name is Pete Gazzaro. I want to welcome you today to the Emotionally Healthy Leader

podcast. Our theme today is patience, the life work of a leader. Patience, the life work of a leader,

or perhaps better said, the indispensable quality of a mature leader, being patience. So today

really is going to be a bit of a devotional.

And I've actually been holding this for this Advent Christmas season

because of the intensity of the hurry that surrounds all of us.

But actually, it's a life transforming truth and insight that I come back to over and over again, especially

at this time of the year, because of an insight that years ago I learned from Tertilian, the

great church father from North Africa in the third century about God's nature is to be patient. And the most visible sign of God's

patience is actually found in the incarnation itself. And then when the Holy Spirit descends,

patience and waiting is always on her side. So that's going to be our theme I want to explore with

you and actually end with a bit of an exercise to hopefully slow you down to enter into the very patience of God.

So as you know, human beings have always been in a hurry.

It's not just in our generation today, but the fast-moving, goal-oriented, determined-driven,

quality of especially Western civilization, has been around a very long time.

I mean, I don't like waiting in traffic jams.

I finish people's sentences.

You probably hear me talk fast on this podcast.

And I, you know, I get impatient in waiting on God for messages to come together,

to gestate over time. I, even in discerning God's will and making good decisions,

I struggle with patience. And in fact, one needs great patience as a leader to build anything of any substance,

whether it's a ministry, a church, a community. It takes years, decades sometimes. And I mean,

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