Where Is Patience When You Need It?

Proverbs 19: 11

“Sensible people control their temper;
 they earn respect by overlooking wrongs.”

We have all seen it. The impatient person who cannot sit still. This person has to be doing something most of the time. While we see impatience play out at traffic lights and grocery store lines, the change in a person under these conditions is very noticeable. You go from easygoing to very serious in seconds. Your focus moves to the one thing you deem needs to happen quicker. Anger may follow this laser-like attention to the one detail that is not right. A monologue of reasons it could go quicker or how that person could have chosen differently comes out of nowhere. I should know, I have been that person many times. Once your turn or time to go arrives, the people around you are happy that it is over. Was all that necessary? Did you get through the line any quicker? Did you get to the place you were going any quicker? All these questions go unanswered, except one: was all that really necessary?

Your walk with the living God can be frustrating at times. The Bible is full of impatient people. Ask Moses, who struck the rock instead of touching it, or any one of the prophets, or Paul, who pleaded with God to take away the thorn in his side, and the Lord did not. The Lord simply said, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9).  

If the Lord’s power is made perfect in weakness, then patience has to follow. You can spend all day griping at God and praying angry prayers, only to say amen and still go to bed frustrated and impatient. David writes for the Lord in Psalm 46:10 and says, “Be still and know that I am God.”

Things around us may be very frustrating and even make us angry, kind of like the angry guy at a stoplight. Everything has its turn and place, and the Lord’s timing is perfect. You can be frustrated at God and still get to where you are going in His timing. Paul keyed us into a nugget of wisdom: if we boast all the more about the greatness of the Lord and about our weakness, then the power of Christ will rest on us. Where does patience really come from, you ask? It comes from the wisdom of the Lord resting in our hearts and trusting in the direction of the Lord and His timing. So, the next time you feel the frustration rise up like a flooding river, remember that the Lord has it all under control. Personalize Psalm 23 and rest in the Lord’s presence even in the middle of your disaster.

Prayer: Heavenly Father, teach us to be still when our hearts want to rush ahead. When frustration rises, and our patience fades, remind us that Your timing is perfect and Your grace is enough. Help us trust Your wisdom more than our own understanding. Let Your power rest on us in our weakness, and fill our hearts with peace as we wait on You. In Jesus’ name, Amen.