Should you pray for patience? Maybe you’ve heard the warning: “Don’t pray for patience — God will put you through wringer to get you to learn it!”

I don’t think much of that saying. It makes God look like a nasty schoolmaster who makes us go through hard things mostly to prove we can go through hard things. Patience has a point and a purpose, and it isn’t just growing a tougher hide. Quite the opposite, actually; it’s about developing a heart of love and of trust.

Lessons From Experience

I’ve had some experience with patience. We all have, in our own ways. I’m in recovery now from a serious injury that’s kept my left foot in a cast, a splint or an orthopedic boot, along with crutches and/or a knee walker, for most of the past four and a half years. Along the way I had no idea how long this would last. In fact for the for the first four years or so, I was always “six to eight weeks from full recovery,” or so the doctors kept saying.

I’m still not there yet. My foot works, at least, and I’m grateful for that. I can walk some distance, though usually with pain. Mostly it gets me at night; in fact just last night I had foot spasms that kept me up until almost 2:00 am.

It would have been one thing if I’d known from the start how long it would last. Instead there were multiple setbacks, repeated failures and several surgeries, each of which felt like starting over again. I kept wondering, When is this ever going to get better like they keep telling me it’s going to!

So I’ve had plenty of opportunity to think about what it means to be patient, and why it matters. I’ve concluded it isn’t mostly about toughness of character. Sure, there’s some of that involved, but mostly it’s about love and trust.

Patience is Love

Here’s how I could avoid needing patience with other people. It’s simple! If everyone would just do what I want them to do, the way I want and when I want, I’d never need to be patient with them.

The world isn’t that way, though, and for good reason. Impatient relationships are self-centered relationships. The more I want you to order your life around my agenda and my needs, the less I’m loving you. It’s as simple as that. Sometimes my wife says I’m impatient with her. That’s true; but underneath it the real problem in those moments is that I’m not loving her.

The apostle Paul didn’t write, “and now abide faith, hope, and patience, these three; but the greatest of these is patience.” He identified love as the greatest virtue (1 Cor. 13:13). Patience matters interpersonally, precisely because it is a way of loving.

Patience is Trust

Patience trusts that God is doing His job right, and that He’s doing it on the right schedule. Impatience, on the other hand, is a way of telling God I don’t trust His wisdom His goodness and His timing.

The feeling of impatience is actually a pretty good warning signal, telling us we’re not trusting God the way He’s worthy to be trusted.

It’s easy to get mixed up about it, though. Some people think the difference between godly patience and impatience is that patience waits quietly while impatience jumps into action. That’s not a good way to tell the difference, though. Patience could be very quiet or very active; either one is possible. The difference also isn’t that godly patience is always satisfied while impatience is dissatisfied.

For example, when I came out of my fourth and last surgery, my foot and leg muscles were pretty seriously atrophied. I was dissatisfied with that, you can be sure — and I let that dissatisfaction drive me to do the hours of physical therapy I was prescribed. Meanwhile (on my better days at least) I kept on trusting God to be loving me and doing good for me, in His way and on His schedule, regardless of how my foot was doing.

So Pray For Patience — Or For Love and Trust Instead

So should we pray for patience? Sure! God certainly wants us to grow in it, and we certainly need His help. It’s a great prayer — as long as it doesn’t lead us to miss the reason patience really matters: it’s an expression of what really counts.

Our Lord isn’t a nasty schoolmaster trying to thicken our hide. He’s a loving God who wants to soften our hearts with love and with trust.

Adapted from an article at Thinking Christian. Used by permission.