“Just be patient.” I cannot count the number of times that I
have been told that phrase. Patience is one of the most difficult things for
me, partly because it affects several things. When you don’t want to wait for
God to work, you are impatient. When you get angry, you have “lost your
patience”. When you are quick to give up or freak out, it is normally because
you are impatient. Asking questions in the beginning of articles helps me
better figure out how to grow in this area, so here goes. What is patience?
What does the Bible say about patience? Why should we be patient? How can we as
Christians improve in this area?
The first
question that I want to touch on is, “Why should we be patient?” This is
important, because without answering this question adequately, the rest of the
article has no purpose or direction. One reason why we should be patient is
because everything is much sweeter when you have waited for it. If I ate at
Pizza Hut and then went to Golden Corral right afterwards, the Golden Corral
food wouldn’t taste as good as if I had not eaten anything for several hours
before eating at Golden Corral. Another reason is because God commanded it (see
Philippians 4:6). Later in this article, I will more or less attempt to answer
this question a little bit better.
What is
patience? Well, I looked up the word “patience” in a thesaurus, and these are
the words that I came up with: endurance, tolerance, persistence, fortitude,
serenity, perseverance, stamina, forbearance, and a few others as well. That’s
a long list to define, so that’s why those words are all summed up with one
word: patience. Perseverance is working hard to finish a task; sticking with
something. Endurance and stamina describe more of a level of how long a person
can endure something (i.e. a race). Tolerance is when your four year-old
brother is making weird noises with his face over and over and over again, and
you just ignore it and don’t tell him to knock it off (although there is
definitely a place for that). Persistence is asking over and over again for
something until you get it. Now, obviously these words have multiple meanings,
but those are just examples of what those words mean.
What does
the Bible say about patience? The answer is: a lot. In his second epistle to
the church in Thessalonica, Paul says that he boasts about the church’s
patience (2 Thessalonians 1:4). James says that the testing of our faith
produces patience (James 1:3). In Colossians,
Paul tells the church to put on patience (Colossians 3:12). Patience is one of
the fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22). There are so many other verses on
patience in the Bible, but unfortunately I cannot mention them all. However, in
this we see that patience is a virtue of many different aspects. Impatience
leads to hurt relationships, short tempers, and missing some of the benefits of
waiting for things.
So how, as
Christians, can we improve in this very important area of our lives? There is
always a challenge in taking a command in scripture and practically applying it
to our lives. It is not a skill that I have exactly developed, but this is my
best attempt at it. I believe that patience and prayer go hand-in-hand, in the
sense that without prayer, patience is impossible. Sure, without prayer, you
may keep it together a little bit, but I desire a patience that lasts. Everyone
tends to struggle with different aspects of patience, but no matter what type
of patience you are struggling with, you cannot be patient in your own
strength. So, my practical solution is to pray, and don’t beat yourself up when
you lose it, but try to do better than you have done yesterday, which may sound
cliché, but that is the very best way to work towards improving in this area of
your life. If you mess up, pray and focus on improving.
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