We are not good at waiting
Do you struggle with patience?
In 1942, Rafael Solano was physically exhausted and defeated. He sat down on a boulder in a dry Venezuelan riverbed and told his crew he was finished. “I’m through,” he said. “There’s no use going on any longer. See this pebble? It makes 999,999 I’ve picked up without finding one diamond. One more pebble makes a million, but what’s the use? I quit.” For months, Solano and his crew had been searching that riverbed for signs of a diamond field. Day after day, stone after stone, hope had slowly worn thin. Their clothes were in tatters. Their bodies were tired. Their spirits were even more tired. Then one of the men said, “Pick up just one more and make it an even million.” So Solano reached down and picked up one more stone. Only this stone was different. It was about the size of a hen’s egg, and it turned out to be a diamond. That stone became known as The Liberator, one of Venezuela’s most famous diamonds.
I love that story because it reminds me not only of the importance of stickability but also what impatience can cost us. I bet most of us have not thought much about the cost of impatience. Why would we? Our world has trained us to think the opposite. We are taught to look for quick success, fast fixes, and easy wins.
And yet, we also know there is something attractive about patience. We admire patient people. We may not always want to be them, but we know there is something good and steady about them.
For Christians, Scripture does not present patience as a bonus virtue for unusually spiritual people. Patience is part of a faithful life with God. Take a look at some verses:
- The psalmist says, “Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him” (Psalm 37.7).
- Isaiah says, “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength” (Isaiah 40.31).
- Proverbs says, “Whoever is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a hasty temper exalts folly” (Proverbs 14.29).
- James writes, “Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord” (James 5.7).
Patience is tested in little things and heavy things
However, we all know patience is challenging because it gets tested in both small things and big ones. It is tested when a child in a highchair does everything with his food except eat it. It is tested when someone in front of us at the store counts out exact change while we are already late. It is tested when the driver ahead of us seems committed to making every green light turn red. Those moments are small, but they still reveal something in us.
Then there are the heavier things. We know what it is like to remain powerless to force God’s timing. We know we cannot make grief heal faster. We cannot make a child mature faster, especially during the toddler and teen years. We cannot make a body recover faster, or even recover at all. We cannot make another person become who we wish they would become simply because we are ready for them to change.
Patience stretches us. It stretches us because it is tested nearly every day, and usually in places we did not choose.
This is why patience is not merely something good Christians do. Patience is an act of faith. It is what trust looks like when we cannot control the timing, the outcome, or the person in front of us. Patience is not simply the ability to wait without complaining, though that would be a miracle for most of us. Patience is what grows in us when we learn to trust God in the space between what we want and what He is doing.
So, how do we develop the fruit of patience?
Patience is not natural. It is Spirit-given strength.
Patience requires more than personality, temperament, or self-control. This is why Paul prays that the church would be “strengthened with all power, according to his glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy” (Colossians 1.11). Notice what Paul does not say. He does not say, “Try harder to calm down.” He does not say, “Just stop being so irritated.” He does not say, “Become the kind of person who is never bothered.” He prays for power because patience takes strength, and not merely human strength, but God-given strength.
That is the difference between ordinary waiting and Christian patience. Everyone has to wait. You can wait in a doctor’s office, wait in traffic, wait for a phone call, or wait for a hard season to change. But Christian patience is not just waiting because you have no other choice. Christian patience is waiting with trust. It is waiting while surrendering your demand to control the timing. It is waiting while refusing to let anger, fear, or resentment become the loudest voice in you.
This is why patience is a fruit of the Spirit. Fruit is not manufactured. It is grown. You can tape an apple to a dead branch, but that does not make the branch alive. In the same way, you can imitate patience for a while. You can hold your tongue, force a smile, take a deep breath, or keep yourself from sending the text you really want to send. Those may be good and necessary in the moment, but they are not the same thing as spiritual fruit. The Spirit is after something deeper than behavior management. He is forming patience from the inside.
God’s grace does not merely forgive your impatience. It begins to heal what produces it. The Spirit exposes the fear beneath your need to control. He reveals the pride beneath your irritation. He softens the resentment beneath your anger. He teaches you that your time, convenience, and preferred outcome are not ultimate. Only Christ is ultimate. And as the Spirit turns your heart toward Him, patience begins to grow.
Most of us ask God to make the road easier. You ask Him to shorten the wait, remove the difficult person, fix the problem, speed up the answer, or make the task smaller. Sometimes, in His mercy, He does. However, when He does not, remember that God is doing something deeper. He may be strengthening your trust. He may be exposing the fear beneath your need for control. He may be teaching you to keep loving when love is not easy. He may be forming the kind of patience that cannot be produced by willpower alone. We cannot always know exactly what God is doing in the waiting, but we can trust that He is not absent from it.
Patience grows beneath the surface
We cannot always know exactly what God is doing in the waiting, but we can trust that He is not absent from it. And often, the work God does in the waiting is hidden before it is visible. That is hard for us because we usually measure growth by what we can see. But the fruit of patience often grows beneath the surface long before it shows up in our lives.
There is a story often told about the Chinese bamboo tree. The seed is planted. It is watered. It is fertilized. It is watched. The first year, nothing happens. The second year, nothing happens. The third year, nothing happens. The fourth year, still nothing happens. Then, sometime in the fifth year, the bamboo shoots up dramatically.
So the question is, did the bamboo grow in a few weeks or over five years? The answer, of course, is both. The growth became visible in a few weeks, but the life had been developing beneath the surface for years. Without the hidden years, there would have been no sudden growth.
Patience often grows like that. Most of the work is hidden. It grows when you do not interrupt. It grows when you do not fire back. It grows when you keep praying. It grows when you forgive again. It grows when you listen longer than you wanted to. It grows when you do the next faithful thing without seeing the result yet. None of that may feel dramatic in the moment. It may not look like much is happening. But roots are often growing before height appears.
So here is the change. Do not try to become patient everywhere all at once. That will only make you frustrated and probably more impatient. Instead, name one place where patience is being tested right now. Maybe it is with your child. Maybe it is with your spouse. Maybe it is with your body. Maybe it is with unanswered prayer. Maybe it is with a person who is not changing as quickly as you wish they would. Name the place where you are most tempted to force the outcome.
Then ask the Lord to help you with one small act of faithful patience. Ask Him to help you wait before responding, pray before speaking, or listen without interrupting. Ask God for the strength to trust Him in that one place today.
The waiting may feel wasted, but it does not have to be empty. God often grows roots before He grows height. Patience is formed in those hidden places where you keep trusting, keep loving, keep praying, and keep doing the next faithful thing while God is at work beneath the surface.
Patient people become people of peace
When patience begins to grow in you, you become less frantic because patience teaches you to live with open hands before God. You discover that your timeline is not ultimate, your control is not supreme, and your fear does not have to rule the room.
There is an old line about music that says there is no music in a rest, but there is the making of music in it. A rest looks like nothing is happening. No note is played. No sound is heard. But the rest belongs to the song. Waiting can feel like that. It can feel like silence or absence. Yet in Christ, waiting is never empty. God may be doing some of His deepest work in the places that feel quietest to us.
Patient people are not passive or careless. They have learned, slowly and often painfully, that God is not rushed, and He is not absent.
Rafael Solano did not know the millionth pebble would be different. He only knew there was one more stone to pick up. Most of the time, patience looks like that. One more prayer. One more day of trust. One more moment of surrender. One more decision not to let anger, fear, or resentment have the final say.
In Christ, your waiting is not wasted. The God who raised Jesus from the dead is at work even when the ground looks still. Patience does not mean nothing is happening. Patience means you are learning to trust the One who is working in ways you may not yet be able to see.