Patience Part 2: Cultivating Patience in Hard Times

Blog Series

Helpful Tips for Saving Yourself from Trouble

It is said that you cannot break the laws of God. You can only break yourself against them when you violate them. In this Helpful Tips for Saving Yourself from Trouble series we are looking at some of the simple and clear “laws of God” – that is to say, “biblical principles” – that we must follow if we do not want to bring very negative cause-effect consequences into our lives.

An eternal perspective is the basis of patience

We used to joke with our daughter when she was growing up that she should not become a doctor because she would never have any patients (patience). The reality is, many of us could use the same caution. All agree that patience is a virtue, but few excel in it. (By the way, now a loving wife and mother, our daughter is teaching the virtue of patience to her own young daughter.)

Last week, we looked at five patience hacks for dealing with life irritations. This week, we look at how to deal with life’s big challenges that require significant cultivation of patience.

To be patient in the big, hard things of life requires an eternal perspective. “Big things” that require patience are a form of “trial,” and trials can only be dealt with by viewing them as God does.

Without an eternal perspective, we are playing checkers in life while God is playing chess.
We make all the wrong moves and lose in the end.

All human beings are also, and foremost, spiritual beings – the part of us that lives forever. As Christians, we need to also understand that we are no longer citizens of this world. We are now citizens of another world. Philippians 3:20 says, “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which also we eagerly wait for a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Colossians 1:13 says, “For He rescued us from the domain of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son…”

It is as the old “spiritual song” says,

This world is not my home, I’m just passing through.
If heaven’s not my home, then Lord, what will I do?
The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door,
And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.

As citizens of another world, we have different values, priorities and expectations.

Perhaps you’ve heard the story about the missionary couple years ago returning to the United States on a passenger ship, after having spent a lifetime in service to the Lord in central Africa.

Coincidentally, Teddy Roosevelt was returning home on the same ship after one of his famous hunting safaris in Africa. When the ship pulled up to dock, bands were playing, flags were waiving, dignitaries were lined up to meet him. Major-league hoopla and whoop-de-do greeted the returning President.

The missionary husband leaned on the railing watching the celebration, and said to his wife, “The president goes on a hunting trip, and the world turns out to meet him when he returns. We spend our entire lives serving the Lord in Africa and when we come home, there isn’t even anyone to meet us.”

After a brief silence his wife replied, “But the difference is, we are not home yet.”

And, that is the difference. They weren’t home yet. When Christians do get home, the heavenly bands will play, celestial confetti will fly, saintly dignitaries will be on hand. There’ll be a parade in paradise down the streets of gold.  Until then, life is likely to treat us worse than a Yankee manager in a Dodger dugout.

Does life seem all uphill to you? You’re not home yet. Do life’s rewards seem to pass you by? You’re not home yet. Do you have longings that are not fulfilled by anything on earth? You’re not home yet. Don’t expect this world to treat you as though you were.

This world isn’t our home. We’re just passing through. Be patient. Be willing to wait until you get home to receive your reward. Live for your citizenship in heaven. An eternal perspective is the key to cultivating patience in the face of life’s hard times.

Patience is only developed through trials

Patience does not come easily or passively. Patience only comes through the price of trials.

By analogy, the price we must pay for physical strength is to push ourselves past our comfort zone, to tax and stress our heart, lungs and muscles beyond their normal tolerance, to induce significant pain and fatigue. Then, afterward, by resting and nourishment, our body recovers and becomes stronger than it was before.

This is also true of all spiritual progress, including patience. We must go through things that test and try us, that take us beyond our comfort zone, that tax and stress us past our normal tolerance. Afterward, when the trial is over, we recover spiritually and become stronger than we were before.

• Peter said, in 1 Peter 5:10, “After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you.”
• Peter also said, “For what credit is there, if when you sin and are harshly treated for it, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it, you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.” (1 Peter 2:20)
• James instructs us to “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trails, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance” (1:2-3)
• James further encourages us, “As an example of suffering and patience, brethren, take the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. We count those blessed who endured. You have heard of the endurance of Job and have seen the outcome of the Lord’s dealings, that the Lord is full of compassion and is merciful.” (5:10-11)

While trials are the price for developing patience, God is ready to meet us on the other side of trials with spiritual growth and blessing.

Blessing is the reward of patience

Finally, we come to the reward of endurance: “And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:4).

Who wouldn’t want to be perfect and complete? But the only way to get there is on the other side of trials.

The word “perfect” here does not mean without imperfection. Rather, it means perfect in the sense of being complete and mature. When a kernel of corn is planted into soil, it eventually sends down roots, sprouts a fragile seedling, and then grows, matures, into the same thing that the seed came from. That’s what it means to be “perfect.” It means being fully formed, having become that which was intended.

Endurance, when fully formed into patience, can give us a stability, a fortitude, a “centeredness” that makes life easier to live. Benjamin Franklin once wrote “discontentment makes a rich man poor while contentment makes a poor man rich.” John Bunyan said, “If we have not “quiet” in our minds, outward comfort will do no more for us than a golden slipper on a gouty foot.”

Trials, rightly endured, produce patience and other fruit of the Spirit. In Galatians 5:22-23, we read, “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience…”  When we have that fruit, we enter into a satisfaction in life that we cannot experience any other way.

Conclusion

Peter said, “Prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:13). Paul said, “Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (Colossians 3:1-2).

We are to have an eternal perspective in life, viewing life as God does. Based on that eternal perspective, we can learn to endure the trials of life with more and more patience, becoming mature in our faith.

James Packer said, “Patience means living out the belief that God orders everything for the spiritual good of his children. Patience does not just grin and bear things, stoic-like, but accepts them… as therapeutic workouts planned by a heavenly trainer who is resolved to get you up to full fitness.”

William Barclay said something similar: “All kinds of experiences will come to us to purify and validate us. There will be the test of the sorrows and disappointments which seek to take our faith away. There will be the test of the seductions which seek to lure us from the right way. There will be the tests of the dangers, the sacrifices, the unpopularity which the Christian way must so often involve. But they are not meant to make us fall: they are meant to make us soar. They are not meant to defeat us: they are meant to be defeated. They are not meant to make us weary: they are meant to make us stronger. Therefore, we should not bemoan them: we should rejoice in them. The Christian is like the athlete. The heavier the course of training he undergoes, the more he is glad, because he knows that it is fitting him all the better for victorious effort.”

So let us mentally transfer our citizenship to heaven (where it already actually is), and lean into the trials of life.

Use the 5 patience hacks we discussed last week for dealing with life irritations.

Nurture an eternal perspective for cultivating patience during life’s hard times. 

In case you’re new here:
As this series continues, each succeeding post will be added to and available in the blog archives. The entire “Helpful Tips for Saving Yourself from Trouble” series is in the archives, beginning with the first post on July 26, 2022.

Strengthen your spiritual foundation:
Our “Discipleship In a Box” the Brave New Discipleship System, is on a Super Sale, discounted from $249 to $49!

Accelerate your spiritual transformation:
Brain science meets the Bible in The Change Zone. Based on Romans 12:2 and modern neuroscience, I’ve created a new membership resource, a daily mental renewal system to help motivated Christians transform their lives. Learn more here.