Courageous Patience

Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes, wait patiently for the Lord.

Psalm 27:14 (NLT)

Patience is a virtue, or so I’ve been told. I’ve never been really good at patience. Sitting around and waiting for something to happen seems foreign. Why wait when we can do something, right?

In this day and age, waiting is something people pay billions of dollars to avoid. Think about it. We have fast food that is delivered in about 60 seconds. We have Amazon Prime, which guarantees delivery in two days instead of the standard three to five. (Two days still seems too long to me!) We can now stream movies and TV shows to our devices anywhere we get a Wi-Fi or cell signal. We used to have to drive down to a store to rent a movie and wait for that TV show to come on during its normally scheduled time on a particular day of the week. We have microwaves that can cook something in just a few minutes, when only a few decades ago one had to use an oven, which would take forever!

Oddly enough, this economy of not waiting has caused our society to look poorly upon those who make us wait. Don’t believe me? I’ve had people get mad at me because it took longer than just a few seconds to respond to their text message. I’ve had employees walk into my office and ask why I hadn’t responded to their email that they had sent me 90 seconds ago. I’ve heard people sigh and complain because it took somebody a minute to order at a fast food joint, rather than just the few seconds that they planned on consuming of the cashier’s time. We are a society that stinks at practicing patience.

Then we have this verse from King David, “Wait patiently for the Lord.” He also follows it up with, “Be brave and courageous.” In other words, being patient is a sign of bravery. How so?

When it comes to the Lord, patience is the ultimate demonstration of trust. It means we surrender our timeline of when things should get done to His. This requires courage. When things aren’t going well, we expect immediate results. But, God often doesn’t work that way. Instead, He makes sure everything is perfectly ready to go before He leads us. The result is that He is always correct, avoiding the snap judgments we make when we rush through things.