Waiting patiently for God is itself a sign of increasing spiritual maturity, but we often find it difficult to do this! Few of us enjoy waiting for God. Abraham got impatient waiting for the son of promise to be born, hence he slept with Hagar and saw Ishmael born. ‘His son by the slave woman was born according to the flesh, but his son by the free woman was born as the result of a divine promise.’ (Gal 4:23) Saul got impatient waiting for the prophet Samuel to arrive and offered the burnt offering, even though he was neither a prophet nor a priest: Samuel’s comment was ‘You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure; the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command.’ (1 Sam 13:13-14) Impatience is a natural tendency, but it is one that we have to let go of if we are to grow spiritually. ‘Whoever is patient has great understanding, but one who is quick-tempered displays folly.’ (Prov 14:29) Impatience is a sign of immaturity, but if we are patient, we have great understanding, for we are displaying a confidence in God’s ability to work all things together for good in His timing and in His way.
God Himself is patient (2 Pet 3:9, 1 Pet 3:20, Rom 2:4, Rom 3:25), so it’s obvious that He is going to want to develop patience within us, since His goal is for us to become conformed to the image of Christ. (Rom 8:29) One of the ways that God actually works patience into our characters is to allow difficult circumstances into our lives so that we learn not to rely on ourselves but to rely on Him: ‘this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.’ (2 Cor 1:9) The force of ‘pester power’ (demonstrated in the story of Samson and Delilah and experienced by every parent of a demanding toddler!) does not work on God, however! It requires maturity to accept that we do not understand the whole picture and to accept that God knows best, even when it seems He does not give us what our hearts yearn for. Nonetheless, we need to learn that He loves us so much that He will not give in to our demands if that is not the best thing for us, just as we have learnt that as parents, there are times when we must harden our hearts to our children’s pestering and protect them from themselves. The more we allow God to work patience into our lives, the more we will grow spiritually.