"Patience: Noun. The ability to stay calm while waiting for an outcome
1. WHAT PATIENCE IS
"Patience: Noun. The ability to stay calm while waiting for an outcome
that is needed or wanted."
We live in an age when we have almost lost the ability to be patient. Our culture is becoming increasingly demanding of the immediate satisfaction provided by instant meals, quick messaging, and same day deliveries. Not having to wait for physical things we need or would like is nice, of course; but people are becoming increasingly impatient. "Delayed gratification" is often seen as an antiquated virtue, and patience itself is often sneered at. As is sometimes cynically noted, "Patience is something you admire in the driver behind you and scorn in the one ahead."
Because we are able to avoid having to be patient in many physical areas today and are increasingly unwilling to wait, we tend to forget a basic truth – that patience is needed for things that really matter in life. As is sometimes said, "You can't microwave character," and the same is true of happiness, strength, and countless other qualities that make life worthwhile and meaningful. It is certainly true that almost every spiritual quality has to be matured through time and needs patience on our part in order for its eventual development to occur (see, for example, Luke 8:15).
Defining Patience If we as a culture have almost lost the art of patience, we have also lost sight of much of what patience is. If you look up the word "patience" in a dictionary, you will doubtless find a definition similar to the one that opens this chapter. It will tell you that patience is the ability to wait calmly for a desired outcome or to resist frustration or anger despite provocation. That may be true, but definitions of this kind are sadly limited in helping us to see what else patience is. Patience involves and affects far more in our lives than our ability to simply wait.
It is perfectly possible to wait "patiently" for something without waiting properly for it – as is often said, patience involves how we behave while we are waiting. Also, of course, limited definitions like those we have just looked at are not a lot of help in getting a better understanding of how patience works (or doesn't) in the human mind, in what ways it is valuable, and how we can develop it.
Fortunately, the Bible gives us a much deeper and richer understanding of what is involved in true patience – one that can help us to increase patience in our lives in a great many ways. There are literally hundreds of verses in the Scriptures that speak of the importance of patience and the need to employ it, but there is no single verse that tells us everything we need to know about this quality. We must bring a number of biblical passages together in order to form a complete picture of what patience is and how to grow it.
Although we may not have a specific biblical verse to guide us in defining patience, several essential aspects of the Bible's teaching on this matter were wonderfully summed up in the words of the Egyptian Christian scholar and teacher, Adel Bestavros (1924-2005):
Patience with others is Love,
Patience with self is Hope, Patience with God is Faith.
Bestavros' summary of patience conveys a timeless truth – or three truths. Rather than being the passive quality of just waiting calmly, as we so often tend to think of it, patience is really a much more dynamic activity – an actual application in our lives of the central biblical traits of faith, hope, and love. As such, properly understood, patience is about what we do.
We can understand this by means of a simple analogy. Learning to hold our breath is of no value in and of itself. But a person can learn to hold their breath for an extended period of time in order to do things under water – such as to dive for pearls, or rescue people, or simply enjoy the beauty of the ocean in the sport of free-diving.
In the same way, we can learn patience not for its own sake, but in order to more effectively express faith, hope and love. This is a vital part of what the Bible means by patience and we can find this understanding at various points throughout the Scriptures, and most especially in the writings of the apostle Paul.
Paul speaks of patience more than any other New Testament writer – in fact, more than any other biblical writer. Perhaps (as we will see in Chapter 8), that was because he had to develop a great deal of patience himself. But Paul certainly shows patience to be one of the most important aspects of God's nature (Romans 15:5) and one that we must have if we are to become like him (Colossians 3:12).
The apostle shows us not only that patience is one of the fruits of the Spirit of God (Galatians 5:22), but also that it is a quality that can be applied in every area of our spiritual lives. Paul wrote repeatedly about the different aspects of patience and clearly ties them to the three great virtues – faith, hope, and love – that he gives in 1 Corinthians 13:13. The Priority of Patience In fact, we can say that spiritually patience is a manifestation of faith, an attitude of hope, and an expression of love. Patience is an underlying ingredient that enables these cardinal qualities to be present and to function properly in our lives.
So when the Bible speaks of patience as one of the fruits of the Spirit and as one of the characteristics enabling us to exercise faith, hope, and love, it is speaking of a quality that goes far beyond the ability to merely wait calmly or to ignore provocation. Patience is involved in these things, of course, but when it is present with a right attitude it is also so much more – it is an active force at the core of our Christian walk. Exhibiting patience is in itself an act of worship and obedience.
When we truly grasp its importance, we come to see that although patience isn't everything, it is needed for virtually everything in our spiritual lives. That is why the apostle James could write: "let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing" (James 1:4 NKJV).
Seeing what this means in practice can give us a firm foundation in understanding patience that we can then build upon. In the following chapters we will look first at how patience is manifested in faith, hope, and love, as well as other vital ways it interacts with our spiritual lives. Then, in Part Two, we will look at biblical examples from which we can learn in order to increase patience in our own lives.