Learning Patience

Were you ever told by your parent, “Be patient!”? Or did you ever say the same thing to our children? It’s much easier said than done. I well remember being counselled to be patient as I anxiously awaited the coming of Christmas, annual school holidays or some other long anticipated joy. But even more memorable was waiting for a cast to be removed from a broken limb or a bandage from an injury. Even at the earliest age many of us learned the truth of James’ statement, “tribulation works patience!”

At times like these we get an inkling of the patience of Job and how he acquired it. A patient once asked a doctor as he lay immobilised by a very serious accident, “Doctor, how long will I have to lie here?” The doctor answered, “Only one day at a time!”

Learning Patience Sometimes Requires Us To Go Through The School Of Hard Knocks, Then The College Of Crisis In Order To Graduate From The University Of Adversity!

What a lesson. Isn’t it tremendous that sufficient for each day is God’s provision of grace? When we are worried and anxious about the long term, God ministers in the short term, providing grace and endurance for every moment. Patience is a very practical requirement for those who would serve the Lord. How often we encounter problems that no amount of human energy or ingenuity can solve. How frequently we face apparent failures that no amount of knowledge or human wisdom can fix.It may be a relative or a friend we wish to see come to the Lord. When we run up against the stubbornness of self-will, no amount of personal burden, desire, or cleverness on our part, will bring them one millimetre closer to salvation. The time comes when we must concede that only faith, prayer and patience can be brought to bear in the situation.

It may be a relationship conflict in life. Again, a situation in which another’s will is involved. A time when we must ultimate concede that no matter what we do we cannot change another person. We can only allow God to change us and our response to the problem or other person as we submit ourselves to His Holy Spirit working in our lives. If the other party is to be changed, it will have to be the Holy Spirit using us to help them or working directly in their life to bring about the desired changes in attitudes and outlooks and responses. The time comes when we can but rest in the promises of the Lord and lean upon His strong arm to uphold us in the day of our testing and trouble.

It may be a personal trial or thorn in the flesh. A problem or condition that is just beyond our human capacity to cope. A time when we, as Paul, must turn to Him and listen to His voice and accept his promise of sufficient grace. It is then in our resultant infirmity that we may learn patience to keep going on for the Lord.

Yes, we all learned at an early age that patience is related to waiting. Waiting is the common element. For the Christian the critical concern is not just waiting, but how we wait and what waiting works in us. The prophet Isaiah says to those who have exhausted their patience in the work of the Lord, “But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings as eagles: they shall run and not be weary: and they shall walk and not faint.”