The fourth fruit of the spirit,
patience, is one quality that, while it may not be absolutely critical, will
make our lives and the lives of others so much easier. In other words, being
patient isn’t going to get you to heaven, but it will make you and the people
around you far happier and much less stressed.
In my opinion, there are three main
things we need to be patient with.
1: Other people. We have to start
by doing our best to be patient with the people who are part of our everyday
life; especially those who we are trying to help by teaching them things. We
can all learn this from past experience, throughout our time we have all learnt
many lessons from many different people, but isn’t it so much easier to learn
from someone who was patient? Think of times when you were trying to learn
something new; of course you probably made mistakes, but the more you did it
the fewer mistakes you made. Then think who was teaching you, was it a patient
person who gently explained what you had done wrong, and then advised you how
to fix it; or was it an irritable person who just yelled at you and made you
feel uncomfortable? Of course, learning with a patient person was much easier,
so if we don’t have patience, then we are never going to be able to be very
helpful teaching anyone, which is frustrating for us and them. Paul tells us a
couple of times in his letters to be patient with younger/weaker people.
Ephesians 4:2 says “With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing
with one another in love,” also 1 Thessalonians 5:14 “And we urge you, brothers
… encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.” Isn’t
it obvious what the Bible wants us to do?
2: Things. What I mean by this is
that if we aren’t patient, then we can waste a lot of unnecessary time and
money. In monetary terms, that is particularly true. It would be foolish when,
say, buying a new car, to just buy the first car under our budget without even
checking the mileage, servicing condition, and distance from where we are, just
for the sake of getting it quickly; surely it’s far better to wait for a good
car that meets all our requirements to come along. That principle is true for
many things, there’s no point spending loads of money just because we couldn’t
be patient and wait for the right item to come along; personally I’ve got
evidence of that, when my old mattress wore out, instead of just rushing of and
buying a new one, I waited and got a really good foam one for free on the
internet. A lack of patience with things really is quite expensive!
3: God. We need to be patient and
trust God in everything, when we are having hard times we just need to be
patient and wait for God to intervene. That is clearly stated in Romans 12:12 “Rejoice
in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.” So surely if we are
not patient with God, then that can only serve to weaken our relationship with
him.
Annoyingly, though, as hard as we
try, we will never have total patience; there will always be times when we are
tired and irritated and we lose our cool, but patience is about limiting those
times so much that we can control ourselves enough not to lose it with people
who are annoying us. That is the mark of a truly patient person.