The Fruit Of The Spirit- Patience
“But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” Galatians 5:22-23 (NLT)
Patience is a concept that is foreign to most people in Western culture. Faster is always better; fast food, instant coffee, microwaves, speed dating, faster transport, shorter queues. We hate waiting. The mock prayer, “Lord give me patience, and hurry up!” has a ring of familiarity to it.
Yet, for many parts of life, waiting is unavoidable, and in fact is part of the journey. It still takes 9 months, more or less, to produce a baby. Christmas only comes once a year. Often, anticipation is part of the pleasure of the event.
The word translated as patience in Galatians 5:22 has a wide range of meaning including patient endurance of evil, forbearance, patient expectation, slowness to avenge injuries. Patience, then, is more than the ability to wait.
Biblical patience is about looking at the long term, the bigger picture. It means focusing on God’s purposes rather than obsessing with what I want. It means seeing our lives through the lens of eternity.
We don’t like to think of suffering as a part of life. Patience, though, is the ability to endure suffering, knowing that God is with us. Even the worst and most extended suffering is just a blip when seen against our eternal destination of heaven.
Joy, peace and patience are closely linked. We experience joy because we trust in Jesus, and nothing can take away the assurance of His love for us. We experience peace because nothing can separate us from the love of Christ, We grow in patience because we trust that, despite our circumstances now, the promises of God will not fail.
Patience, as we might expect, grows over time. We learn that God is faithful and we grow in our ability to trust and to wait.
We should also rejoice that God is patient. He gives everyone a chance to turn to Him. Peter reminds us: “The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9).
The patience that we have to develop is a shadow of the immense patience that the Lord has with us.