Patience is a Virtue

Patience seems to have flown out the window. Why is this so? Find out as we continue our series on the fruit of the Spirit.

Longsuffering is the next fruit that is mentioned in Galatians 5:22. Some versions of the bible refer to this fruit as patience so we will use these two words interchangeably throughout our study. According to Merriam-Webster, long-suffering is defined as patiently enduring lasting offense or hardship. Dictionary.com defines patience as the quality of being patient, as the bearing of provocation, annoyance, misfortune, or pain, without complaint, loss of temper, irritation, or the like.

Patience allows us to take on the heart of God.

I tend to think of patience as being love on trial. It helps us to take on the heart of God towards our fellow man and even with ourselves. Ever since I was a little girl, this is something that I remember my grandmother saying. I must give credit to her for the love on trial reference because she is the one who instilled that in me. She would frequently stress to us that God is always watching and warn us to be mindful of how we treated others. This normally included how patient we were with them.

The King James version of the bible mentions longsuffering 17 times while patience is recorded in the scriptures 34 times. Some people believe that patience is synonymous with being slow. While it is true that patience sometimes causes us to move at a slower pace, this is not always the case. In the new testament, we see that the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance (2 Peter 3:9). From this verse, we are reminded that patience is loving. Most people are not as patient with those that they do not have an affinity for.

As believers, we understand the spiritual implication of patience. Knowing this helps us to hold on to God’s promises as truth and not what we see only. As we read earlier, longsuffering means to patiently endure. We see this type of endurance in Matthew 24:13, when it says that the one who endures to the end will be saved. We also see it in Isaiah 40:31, when we are given a description of what comes as a result of waiting for the Lord. From these verses, we can concur that patience comes with great rewards. However, it is not truly manifested outside of God. Anxiety is a common yet serious mental illness in the United States. It affects 40 million adults – this is not accounting for the youth population. It is the result of being impatient. This is what we can fall into when we try to do anything apart from our Father. The way that we cure this is easier said than done. In Matthew 6:34, we are advised to not be anxious about tomorrow. The bible explicitly encourages us to be anxious for nothing (Philippians 4:6).

More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope (Romans 5:3-4). The world does not understand patience. If we cannot get our wants and needs met within our time limits, we become intolerable of others. We are what some would consider a microwave generation and we tend to not understand the value that patience can bring to one’s life. In the scripture above, we are shown the gradual progression of longsuffering. If we let patience have its perfect work, we will end up lacking nothing (James 1:4). To suffer long is not an easy feat. It is not for the weak but for the strong. Another observation that was made is that longsuffering is constantly paired with mercy. This leads me to believe that we cannot truly experience the full effects of this fruit unless we also understand mercy. This information will be vital in our continued study of patience.