Now that New Year’s Day has passed, so has any real thought that on December 31 when the clock struck midnight, the very next click of the clock ushered in an opportunity for us to wipe the slate clean from 2023 and to start afresh. By January 2, life reminded us that those difficult things we brought to the New Year’s Eve celebration—such as our financial challenges, soured relationships, and health issues—are still very much a part of life.
Though the arrival of 2024 has not given us an opportunity to start afresh, it has provided us an opportunity to identify specific areas in our lives which could benefit from a minor tweak all the way to a major overhaul. The possibilities are endless—habits, character traits, priorities, physical conditioning, relationships—just to name a few. Let me prime the pump by suggesting something many of us may need to work on—a lack of patience.
We live in a world that is hurried and split-second in nature, inhabited by many who find it difficult to wait for anything. To experience what I mean by split second in nature, the next time you drive anywhere, when the traffic light turns green, don’t move. The time it takes the person behind you to honk his/her horn will be a split second. Observe how people drive today: excessive speed, weaving in and out of traffic, running redlights as if they were not even there. A three-minute stop by a redlight is viewed as an eternity. For many, impatience is their default button.
To help us identify what in us needs to be tweaked or overhauled regarding the virtue of patience, we need to make sure we understand its scope. Patience has a much deeper meaning than, for example, children enduring the anticipation of Santa’s arrival without driving everyone around them to distraction. Oxford Languages Online Dictionary defines patience as “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.” Words translated patience in the Bible help as well. One of those words is two words meaning “long nostrils.” It defines patience with a picture of what impatience produces physically. As a person’s impatience morphs into aggravation and anger, his/her nostrils flair and become longer. Another Bible word translated patience literally means “long-souled”, which identifies the ability to stay calm and to keep doing what one is doing without getting frustrated and giving up. It is used specifically to refer to patience with people. A third Bible word means “to abide under” and generally is used to describe patience with circumstances. It speaks to being able to hold up under the pressures of life without giving up, giving in, or getting angry or frustrated.
Now ponder this for a minute. Whereas we typically think of patience as the positive character trait needed for such circumstances as waiting for a package to arrive from Amazon, waiting for the person driving in front of us to turn right on red, or the ability to “chillax” while waiting on a three-minute stop light, patience is much, much deeper than that. Patience means that when life kicks me in the gut, I don’t fold up and quit. Patience means when my child for the umpteenth time forgets to take out the trash, that I don’t declare World War III. Patience is when I’ve prayed and asked God to give me more patience, yet it seems like all He does is allow more and tougher challenges than I’ve ever faced before—and I don’t buckle or say what’s the use.
So, what causes impatience? Actually, nothing causes it. Impatience is the emotional response we choose to have to the actions of people and to life events. People and circumstances are the soil in which our response of impatience grows. It is soil fertilized by lack of faith in God’s ability, willingness, and timing to fulfill a promise or to answer our prayers. It is soil fertilized by worry, by a lack of mental and emotional strength and maturity, and by an inability to live for the long-haul. If we address these fertilizers positively, growth in our patience can happen.
Four important principles we need to realize when addressing these fertilizers so we can grow in our ability to face life with patience:
- First, we can’t grow our patience without something first testing it. Growth in patience is bound by the same law of growth that governs muscle development. We can’t get physically stronger until we have consistently lifted more physical weight than ever before. That law of growth applies not only to patience, but also to growth in faith and in our ability to love difficult people.
- Second, patience/impatience is a personal choice we make every time we face a life situation that tests our patience. Since the decision is ours, it is essential for us to be motivated to make the right choice—patience. One great motivator for choosing patience is that it keeps us from having to deal with negative consequences impatience can foster: anger that can boil into rage (i.e. road rage), bad outcomes from impetuous and hasty decisions, being cheated out of the opportunity for a positive growth experience that could only have come by waiting longer, and collapsing under the weight of a difficult life circumstance which could have made our patience and faith stronger had we hung in there.
- Third, patience is possible only if self-control and self-discipline are its running mates. Both are important character traits for keeping a lid on the negative aspects of impatience – anger, doubt, worry, and hopelessness. Proverbs 25:28 says, “A man without self-control is like a city broken into and left without walls.” Lack of self-control and self-discipline can leave a person defenseless when facing the perils of impatience.
- Fourth, the greatest single resource available to help us respond with and grow in patience is to allow God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, complete freedom to put into our lives His fruit which includes patience, and to remove from our lives the enemies of patience: enmity, strife, and fits of anger (Galatians 5:19-26).
One of the lasting benefits of living patiently is that in doing so, we adopt the nature of God. Exodus 34:6 gives God’s own testimony of Himself when He said, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger (patient), and abounding in steadfast love….” What better motivation could there be for growing in our patience than that?
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