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How to Have the Patience to Have Patience

It’s easier to joke about patience than it is to be patient. I’ve heard people say they don’t have the patience to develop patience. And then there’s the lady who prayed, “Lord, give me patience, and give it to me right now!”

What some of us fail to recognize is that the Lord has been patiently waiting to give us patience long before we even thought of asking for it. Before we get too far into this subject, I must make a confession. I’m not an expert on patience. I’m still learning. It’s a process I struggle with daily. Too often there’s a churning going on inside me. So if you happen to have these same challenges, then come along with me on my journey. We’ll be fellow travelers and fellow learners.

I’m sure you’ll agree that in this fast-paced, snooze-and-lose world, most of us desperately need more patience. In the list of the Fruit of the Spirit, you’ll see the word long-suffering. That’s another word for patience.

I read recently that a special bamboo tree grows in China. The Chinese plant the seed, water and fertilize it, but the first year nothing happens. The second year they water and fertilize it, and still nothing happens. No sign of life comes bursting through the earth. The third and fourth year they water and fertilize it. And then, sometime during the course of the fifth year, in a period of about six weeks this bamboo tree grows to a height of approximately 90 feet!

Now, answer this question: Did the bamboo tree grow 90 feet in six weeks or did it grow 90 feet in five years? The answer is that it took all of the five years; because, without the nurture and care of the preceding four years, there would be no tree.

How long does it take to cultivate this fruit to maturity? And what does it take to make the process happen? In other words, when will this churning inside me go away, never to return?

I’m sure you’ve found, as I have, that we become frustrated and impatient when we think we’re losing control of a situation. Therefore, if we want to learn patience and stay clear of frustration, we’ll need to learn to give up my strong desire to control everything and everybody.

Think of the people you admire the most. What do you like about them? No doubt many different things. Is impatience one of those traits you really appreciate in people? Is there anyone you could look in the eye and honestly say, “What I really like about you is your impatience”? Or, “Ooo! I just love it when you lose your temper!” Probably not. We admire people who don’t become unpleasant even when life gets tough.

But how do we let go and develop patience? Oddly enough, we learn patience through the very things that frustrate us. Believe it or not, we learn patience through difficulty. Our wrestling with the bad stuff of life teaches us patience.

Listen to these words from Romans 5:3-4: “We also have joy with our troubles, because we know that these troubles produce patience. And patience produces character, and character produces hope” (New Century Version).

While our goal is patience, the end result is hope. So, the chain reaction is: sufferings to patience, patience to character, and character to hope. We become people of hope, not people overcome with hopelessness. With hope, we can know that God has a plan for us, a timeline to erase life’s wrongs.

Until then, we wait patiently. Perhaps we’ll suffer in the meantime. But as we do, it’s with the sense that God’s loving concern for us will see us through, and someday all will be made right again.

Maybe you’re thinking to yourself that you’re not so concerned about being patient in times of extreme hardship, sickness, or even persecution; but it’s the little things in life that really get to you, little things like standing in line at the supermarket, or getting stuck behind a slow driver when you’re in a hurry to go somewhere.

Isn’t it true that it’s often the little things that seem to drive us to despair? Unresolved frustrations, so small they seem silly, have a way of mounting up until one day we just lose it.

This is what happened to a minister who was scheduled to speak at an all-day conference. He was running late because his alarm had failed to go off. In his rush to make up for lost time, he cut himself while shaving. Then he found his shirt wasn’t ironed. To make matters worse, running to his car he noticed a tire was flat.

Disgusted, and by this time thoroughly distraught, the minister finally got underway with a sudden burst of speed. Racing through town, he failed to notice a stop sign and rushed through it. As fate would have it, there was a policeman nearby, and in just moments he saw the blue light flashing.

Jumping out of his car, the agitated minister said sharply, “Well, go ahead and give me a ticket. Everything else has gone wrong today.” The policeman walked up and said quietly, “Sir, I used to have days like that before I became a Christian.”

Needless to say, the embarrassed minister was shamed by the policeman’s rebuke, and he went his way, asking God for forgiveness and praying for strength to correct his attitude.

We all have days when things just don’t seem to go right. Even Christians are not free from the little tensions of life that tear at our nerves. If Satan can sap our strength in these smaller, daily battles, his big battles are unnecessary. Christ never promised freedom from frustration, but He does promise patience in frustration.

Some of life’s hardest lessons involve learning patience. To learn to wait while your child in the high chair does everything with his food but eat it, to be willing to quietly sit and listen as a long-winded friend bores you yet again with another of those endless stories, to be ready to actively listen as your child talks in minute detail about everything that happened in her day. To be patient while standing in the checkout line behind an elderly person carefully counting out his exact change for a purchase. To not explode at the driver in front of you. To be able to ignore the impulse to shout. To curb your anger when you’re wronged. That’s the evidence of the Fruit of the Spirit in your life.

A poet has penned, “Oh what peace we often forfeit, oh what needless pain we bear.” And so it seems. When we live life in a hurried frenzy, careening out of control and exhibiting anger at others, we live the opposite of the example Jesus Christ set before us. Oh, to be patient! What a tough lesson to learn, because it’s tested nearly every day by little as well as big things over which we have no control!

God is in the business of maturing His children. He’s always more interested in our growth than He is in our getting our every want, whim, and wish. Therefore, waiting is a useful tool when you consider the end result, especially when it comes to growing sons and daughters prepared for the Kingdom. It’s important for you to realize that God isn’t tantalizing or teasing you. He’s not testing you beyond what you can endure. He takes no great delight in making you wait. He has a total person in view, a mature person. He doesn’t want you to fail in this process. He doesn’t want you to drown before you’ve learned how to swim.

There’s a beautiful text in the book of Isaiah: “The Lord wants to show his mercy to you. He wants to rise and comfort you. The Lord is a fair God, and everyone who waits for his help will be happy” (Isaiah 30:18 New Century Version).

Rest, then, and be patient. Relax in the Lord and in the goodness of God. Like the Chinese bamboo tree, it may seem as though nothing is happening. But in reality something is in process. Keep the faith, hold on to your hope, endure to the end, and don’t give up on yourself or His working in your life.

There’s no way to teach or preach patience into people. You’ll never learn these lessons until you yourself are subjected to the give-and-take as well as the rough-and-tumble of the real world out there.

The writer of the book of Hebrews, says it so beautifully: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doeth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us”. And the secret of the patient life is in the rest of the text, “…looking unto Jesus the author and the finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-3 KJV).

If the apostle James were writing today; he might have said. “Friends, be happy when you go through difficult times, knowing that these things can be used by God to make you patient. And when you’ve developed the fruit of patience, it will pretty much get you through whatever may come your way” (personal paraphrase from James 1:2-4).