A host reflects on teaching the disciplines: it is an ends-and-means problem — people want spiritual maturity and connection with Christ but treat the disciplines as checklists or scheduled events. He contrasts a 'microwave' expectation of instant transformation with a slow-cooker process, using caterpillar-in-a-cocoon and infant-Christian analogies. He confesses he does not spend enough quiet time just listening to God and has never managed his goal of one or two silent days a month.
More on Patience
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Dear LFTP: the incarcerated husband
- My husband is serving a life sentence and I have met someone new — what should I do?
- How would you counsel the incarcerated husband who wants to divorce his wife to free her from the marriage?
Mike reads a heavier letter: the writer's husband is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole, having turned himself in a year and a half ago for a crime from…
From No. 596 · Mr. Prayer Closet
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Dear LFTP: the mumbling husband and long-marriage patience
- How can I get my mumbling husband to speak up so I can hear him?
A woman 'amicably' married 16 years is exasperated that her husband mumbles, talks from other rooms, and won't speak up despite her normal hearing test.
From No. 567 · Talk Less
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Dear LFTP: the step-grandma title
- How should a step-grandparent handle being denied the 'grandma' title?
A letter from a woman whose husband's daughter decreed, eight years after the wedding, that her children may not call their step-grandmother 'grandma.'
From No. 466 · Put Your Name On It
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Dear LFTP: dating a grieving widower
- How can she help her grieving partner feel better about himself without replacing his late girlfriend?
A woman dating a man in his late fifties, still grieving his late girlfriend Vera after a tragic accident less than a year ago, asks how she can help him feel better about himself without replacing Vera.
From No. 423 · The GameStop Squeeze