Nobody prays for patience.

If you have been a Christian more than ten minutes, you know why. There is a quiet joke among believers that goes something like this: do not ask God for patience, because you will not get patience, you will get the circumstances that require it.

We laugh. Then we stop asking.

We ask for peace. We ask for joy. We ask for love. We ask for direction, for wisdom, for provision. We ask for all the fruits of the Spirit that sound like they would arrive as feelings. We skip the one that we know will arrive as a traffic jam.

This week’s theme: Patience.

Today, why the one fruit we never ask for is the one most of us need the most.

Read the verse.

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” - James 1:2-4

James does not pull his punches.

Count it all joy. Not “endure it with gritted teeth.” Not “survive it and move on.” Count it as joy. The thing we are tempted to resent is the thing we are called to receive as a gift.

Which is a lot to ask on a Monday morning. But stay with him.

James is not saying the trial itself is enjoyable. He is saying the trial is doing something in you that nothing else can do. Patience is not grown in quiet. Patience is grown in waiting rooms, in traffic jams, in slow-healing wounds, in prayers that have not been answered yet, in children who are not yet grown, in bosses who do not yet see what you are doing, in bodies that will not do what they used to. Patience is grown in the exact places you wish you did not have to be.

And here is the sentence most of us slide past. That you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Patience is not just one virtue among many. Patience is the thing that lets every other virtue finish forming. Love without patience is not love for long. Faith without patience collapses the moment the answer takes a while. Hope without patience curdles into cynicism. You cannot have a mature anything in the Christian life without patience holding it in place while it grows.

Which is probably why we were given a whole class of circumstances specifically designed to produce it.

The thing you want to pray your way out of may be the very thing you were given to grow your way through.

YOUR ONE THING FOR TODAY

Pick the one situation in your current life that is most trying your patience. The person. The project. The waiting. The not-yet. Instead of praying it away today, pray this: Lord, I count this as joy. Do in me what you planned to do through this. I am not asking you to shorten it. I am asking you to not waste it.

A PRAYER FOR TODAY

Father, I confess I spend most of my prayer life asking you to remove the slow things. The delays. The people. The waiting rooms. Today, teach me the other prayer. Teach me to count it as joy. Teach me that the thing I want out of is the thing you are using to grow me up. Make me patient enough to let patience finish its work in me. Amen.

One short note before I close.

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God bless you, my friend.

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