Patience is given a hard time. It gets no respect as a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Everybody wants love and peace. People like gentleness and self-control, but nobody wants patience. People make jokes about patience. They talk about it like it’s a disease. It’s just not right. This article is to give honor to a great fruit!

Galatians 5:22-23 (NLT) 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!

Patience makes us a high level soldier in God’s army.

Patience enables us to walk with Holy Spirit.

Patience turns us into a partner with Holy Spirit.

Are you starting to want patience? I can feel progress being made.

Patience involves many things, but nothing describes patience like the word waiting. There I said it, one the most dreaded word in the human vocabulary, waiting. But waiting makes us a high level soldier and a partner with the Holy Spirit.

Our inability to wait makes us poor soldiers and partners. The lack of waiting causes us to move too quickly and shoot ourselves. The lack of waiting causes us to run ahead of what God is doing. In this article, I am using the word waiting to mean the same as the word patience.

Waiting teaches3 things, builds3 things, and requires 3 things to do.

Patience Teaches us 3 Things

1. Patience Teaches Us Inactivity is not No Activity

When God makes us wait, it feels like we’re wasting valuable time. But He is working in us and around us. God wastes nothing in your life. He is always training you, changing you, readying you for what He wants to do in you.

Yes, I know, we are ready now! We live in a microwave, drive-through restaurant, all information is available from our phone’s browser. We’ve grown accustomed to fixing our dinner in 2-3 minutes.  We watch a TV show develop a situation, reach a climax, and be resolved in less than 30 minutes. “If human beings can fix stuff quickly, surely God can, too,” we think.

Remember this, God has a purpose and a plan in waiting.

He also may not be waiting on you. Everything of importance requires more people than you, more resources than you have, and proper alignment of circumstances. You may be ready, but other people, resources, and circumstances may not.

2. Patience Teaches Us Whose Agenda is First

When I am required to wait, it means I didn’t get my way. Patience means I must wait on him and His agenda. But we don’t like to wait. We want what we want, and we want it now!

Many of us are “fixers” by nature. We see a problem and do our best to fix it, often without ever seeking God. Learn to adjust your speed to His speed. If we do it His way, it will always be in the right time.

The issues we take to God are sometimes urgent to us, but from God’s perspective may not be as urgent. Patience adjusts our expectations and agenda to His. We are learning to see from His perspective.

3. Teaches Us to Be Partners with God

Patience is the art of learning to work the way He wants to work and at the speed He wants. He is teaching us to be sons and fellow workers in in His ways. Why are we in a hurry if He is not?

Patience Builds in Us 3 Things

1. Builds His Glory

Patience – through trials – deposits parts of God in you.

1 Peter 4:12-13 (NIV 1984) Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

Patience brings His glory! What is Glory? It is the manifestation of God’s presence.When we learn patience and wait on God, His presence rubs off on us! We become carriers of Him!

2. Builds Maturity

James 1:3-4 (MSG) You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

As we patiently endure our trials, it makes us mature Christians. Yes, amid trials is where maturity comes. Doesn’t seem logical does it? How do you learn to be mature? Go through chaos.

3. Builds Endurance

Here is my definition of endurance: “to outlast the enemy or the circumstance or maybe just that person that annoys you.”

Endurance gives us the ability to last. Endurance keeps us from running when times get difficult.

Patience Requires Us To Do 3 Things

Patience is not simply the ability to wait – it’s how we behave while we’re waiting. – Joyce Meyer

1. Do Resist the Urge to Do Something

Isaiah 40:31 “But those who 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.”

Don’t do something just because you are tired of not doing something. You almost always end up doing the wrong thing.

Saul was about to enter a major battle with the Philistines in 1 Samuel 13:5-14. The prophet Samuel told him to wait 7 days and he would come and offer the sacrifice before the battle. After 7 days Samuel did not show up and Saul became impatient. He offered the sacrifice himself. His impatience caused him to lose God’s favor and eventually his kingship. Again, don’t do something just because your impatience has made you anxious to do something. It could cost you more than you ever thought.

Only do what you hear Holy Spirit say to do. Try to relax, enjoy God’s presence, trust God, and don’t get ahead of Holy Spirit. Patience will keep you in the timing of God’s plan. Don’t take matters into your own hands.

2. Do Not Grow Weary in Waiting

Galatians 6:9-10 (NIV 1984) Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

We all get weary. Patience reminds us the promises of God will come.

3. Do Rest

Relax. Seriously. If you are following God’s voice you will not miss His will. Impatience will cause you to run ahead of Him, go in the wrong direction, and in the end waste more time.

Isaiah 30:15 This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.

Rest and know God is working. He will make it all right. Is He God or not? The human nature requires us to work hard to enter God’s rest. Strange, isn’t it? Work hard to rest. I am afraid so.

Rest keeps us from making a mistake. Do we Trust God or Not?

Conclusion

Do you now appreciate the fruit of patience? It’s a fruit that helps us to be good partners with what the Holy Spirit is doing in the earth. Here is to patience!