The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.
Leo Tolstoy
If you are anything like me, learning to be patient is one of the bigger challenges in life.
Have you ever been in a hospital waiting room where family and friends are waiting for the doctor to bring them word about someone they love who has had surgery? Most of the people waiting seem a bit anxious and the looks on their faces tend to be intense and show signs of concern. They are waiting to be told an outcome, but currently they know nothing. They are waiting and waiting and waiting. Will the news be good or will it be bad? If the wait is several hours longer than expected, those waiting may become even more anxious. Their thoughts may become darker and more negative, and in the natural world that would be understandable.
The big question is, how are we when we are in God’s waiting room? Are we anxious, intense, and worried, or are we patiently waiting and expecting good news? If our wait is a lot longer than we thought it would be, do we remain positive and hopeful? We often say that we trust God, but are we showing the fruit of trusting Him?
God rarely seems to be in a hurry about anything, and we are usually in a hurry about everything! We are not satisfied to know that God will make a way; we want to know when He will make a way. The Scriptures promise us that at the appointed time, God will do what needs to be done, but when is the appointed time? It is the time that God determines is the right time, and He rarely ever lets us know how long that will be. We can, however, be assured that it won’t be too long. Our Lord knows what we are capable of, and He will never push us past that point!
What we think is a long time is only a short time in God’s way of looking at things:
Nevertheless, do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like one day.
2 Peter 3:8
God sees things in light of eternity; therefore, He isn’t in a hurry. He sees the end from the beginning. God has already been where we are going, and He already knows exactly what will happen! He always has a good reason for what He does, and learning to believe that helps us to trust Him whether our wait is short or long.
We often want things before we are mature enough to handle them properly, but God knows the best time, and I can assure you that He won’t give us anything until the time is right. God may say, “Wait,” or He may even say, “No,” but whatever He decides will be the perfect thing done at the perfect time. Everything God does concerning our lives and our relationship with Him is for our good!
As children of God, we have the fruit of patience in us, according to Galatians 5:22, but it usually takes several years of walking with God before we see much of it manifested. It is deposited in us as a seed, but it takes time and experience in order to grow and become strong.
The root of the Greek word translated “patience” means to “abide under”—in other words, to stick with something even though it might be unpleasant or even painful. It means to see things all the way through to the finish. Most of us want to run from things that cause us any kind of suffering. The thought of enduring difficulty without at least knowing how long we are expected to do so is very unpleasant. God doesn’t always give us the answers we desire when we want them, simply because He is committed to our spiritual growth, and He views that as much more important than our getting instant relief from something we are going through.
Before I knew much at all about trusting God, it really frustrated me when I needed God to do something that I knew would be quite easy for Him and yet He seemed to be doing nothing at all. I now realize that even though nothing was changing in my circumstances, God was working in me. He was stretching my faith, and by doing so, He was expanding it and making it stronger. Because I did not know how to trust God, I was miserable the entire time I had to wait, and I am sure my wait was much longer than it would have been had I known how to trust Him.
Life does get easier as we gain more experience with God. We learn that although He is usually not early, He truly is never late—at least not according to His timetable. Patience is not merely the ability to wait, it is also how we behave while we wait. We will all wait on many things in life, but to “wait patiently” is the goal God has in mind for us. Waiting patiently is simply not possible unless we trust that God’s character is without flaw, and that He is good and displays His goodness to us as long as we live. Just because a thing does not “feel” good to me does not mean it is not good. I may eventually see that what I thought was bad was, in the long run, very good for me.
Martha and Mary sent a message to Jesus letting Him know that their brother Lazarus was ill. Scripture says that Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, and that they were His dear friends. That being said, even when He heard that Lazarus was sick, He stayed two more days where He was before He went to see him (see John 11:3–6). By the time Jesus arrived, Lazarus had died and had been in the tomb four days already. The natural question would be, “If Jesus loved them so much, why did He wait before going to help them?”
He waited because He wanted the situation to seem like one that was impossible to fix by the time He arrived. When Jesus got there, Martha said, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died” (John 11:21). We often think or say the same thing regarding our own circumstances: “Jesus, if You had wanted to, You could have prevented this from happening.” We, of course, are disappointed and lack understanding on why God would allow something painful that He could have prevented, just as Martha did.
If you are familiar with the story of Lazarus, you know that Jesus did not see the fact that Lazarus had been dead for several days as an insurmountable obstacle. In fact, He wanted the situation to appear impossible, so that the relatives and friends of Lazarus, as well as us, might learn that with God, all things are possible and it is never too late for Him to do what needs to be done. Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, and I am sure after witnessing the miracle, everyone was glad it happened the way it did. Although I have never personally seen anyone raised from the dead, I have seen God give life to many dead circumstances and situations. I think this story should be viewed as an example of the truth that it is never too late for God to work wonders in our lives.
Instead of wanting God to do things our way, we can remember that His way is always better than ours in the long run. There are many mysteries hidden in the wisdom of God. We don’t always understand why things happen as they do, but we do have the privilege of trusting God, and that makes our pain bearable.
Patience gives us the power to enjoy life while we wait for the things we desire. Much of life is wasted being miserable about things that we cannot change. If we can change something unpleasant, then we should do that, but if we cannot, then we should trust God and be determined not to be miserable while we wait to see what He will do. Each day we waste is one we will never get back, and a wise and prudent person does not waste any of the time God has allotted him to be on this earth.
Frustration, discouragement, and misery have never made a bad situation good, but they have caused illness, shortened lives, and ruined relationships. The apostle James said that a patient man is “perfectly and fully developed… lacking in nothing” (James 1:4 [AMPC]). Wow! That sure sounds good to me, and I am sure it does to you also. When I read that Scripture I am often tempted to think, I wish I was patient, but I just am not there yet, but we can be free from impatience. There is a way, and the way is through right thinking.
If I think that I must have what I want before I can be happy, then my own thinking is setting me up for misery. But if I change my thinking to, I trust God and I know His timing is perfect; therefore, I will enter His rest and enjoy my life while I am waiting, then I lack nothing as far as the moment I am in is concerned. Whatever God is going to do about our problems is not going to be hurried by our impatience. One thing is for certain—no matter how long we wait on God to act on our behalf, patience has the power to keep us joyful while we wait!
Something is always happening even when we think that nothing is happening. Consider how a tree grows. We cannot see it grow, but it is growing. It gets taller, and the branches get wider. They say that slow-growing trees bear the best fruit, and I think the same principle applies to people. We may not always see our branches getting wider, but our roots are getting deeper. Someday we will bear good fruit and realize that we were growing all the while we waited.
If we watch anything too closely, we cannot see its growth, but if we are away from it for a while and then return, we are amazed by it. My family had a piece of property that we needed to sell, and although it had been on the market for over three years, absolutely nothing was happening. Not only were we not selling it, but no one had even looked at it. We did not have a single offer in over three years, not even a bad one! I was frustrated because I really wanted to sell it. I prayed about it a lot, and declared by faith that it was sold. And each day that it didn’t sell, I felt frustrated when I thought about it. One morning, as I started to pray about it again, the Lord spoke to my heart and said, Just forget about that piece of property and let Me take care of it. I realized right away that I had been spending an excessive amount of time focusing on that one thing, and God wanted me to get it off of my mind and simply trust that He was working.
Each time the sale of the property came to my mind I thought, God is taking care of it! I finally entered God’s rest concerning it, and within two weeks the property was sold! I’d like to say that I was patient while I was waiting those three years, but the fact is I wasn’t, and my impatience may well have been the reason it took so long. We often think we are waiting on God, but in reality, He may be waiting on us!
The fear of not getting what we want is one of the main reasons for our impatience, but once again let me say that we can change our thinking and it will help us immensely. Instead of thinking, Nothing is happening, we can think, I don’t see anything happening, but I believe God is working!
God knows everything that has happened in the past, is happening right now, and will happen in the future, and He is in control of all of it—He isn’t anxious or impatient. Our impatience comes from the fact that we don’t know how or when our answer will come. The less information we have, the easier it is to become impatient in God’s waiting room, but the Word of God and experience tell us that His timing is perfect and the waiting that we dislike so much is actually working good things in us.
We read stories in the Bible of those we refer to as great men and women of God, and most of us have secretly wished that their testimonies were ours. At least we would like to be admired as they are, although we probably don’t wish we had their experiences. They are indeed great, but let me remind you that they all waited in God’s waiting room. Moses waited forty years in the wilderness. David waited twenty years to become king, and for fifteen of them he had to hide in caves to prevent Saul from killing him. Joseph waited thirteen years for his deliverance, and ten of them he spent in prison. Abraham waited twenty years before having the child God promised Him. If you and I stay in God’s waiting room, we may one day have a great testimony that someone will read about and admire!