Praying for Patience

“Don’t pray for patience!”

Perhaps you have heard someone exclaim this phrase or have even uttered it yourself. If so, you know the drill:

“Don’t pray for patience, or you’ll get stuck in traffic!”

                                “Don’t pray for patience, or God will make you wait.”

                                                                “Pray for patience? Are you sure you want to do that?”

I’ve heard statements like these, frequently uttered with a laugh, as long as I can remember, but it’s only been in the past few years that I have begun to understand how they have affected my own thought process.  As I’ve come to evaluate these warnings, I’ve discovered two ways in which the underlying mindset behind them is profoundly incorrect and downright dangerous.

First, these comments are spoken from the assumption, whether conscious or not, that God is what some have termed a “cosmic killjoy,” that He is all about making our lives as frustrating and difficult as possible. Now while it is true that God never promises us happy lives of constant pleasure and that as followers of Christ we are guaranteed to share in His suffering, it is also true that God does not withhold blessings (sometimes physical, but often spiritual) from His children. At His core He is good, and in His dealings He is good.  

Statements like “Don’t pray for patience, or you’ll get stuck in traffic” or “Don’t pray for help loving people, or God will send you a bunch of jerks,” imply that God will necessarily respond to your request for something good by forcing you to go through something hard or frustrating. Such an assumption became dangerous in my own life because it began to seep into other facets of my mindset to the point that I became hesitant to pray about certain things for fear of God’s taking them away or somehow bringing difficulty to my life through them.

—until one day the absurdity of this hesitancy hit me like a ton of bricks.

What an injustice to God’s Name to deny His wisdom in allowing what He chooses to allow. What a gross misrepresentation of His character to assume that He will always reward prayer with hardship!

And then I thought, but so what if He does?

Knowing that God is all-good and all-wise and that, because I am His child, He has my best interests at heart, then even if He does allow hardship and pain in my life in order to grow and refine me, would such hardship and pain not be worth it? Would it not be better to suffer hardship in the process of becoming more like Christ than it would be to live a life of perfect ease outside of the will of God?

This is not to say that suffering is enjoyable or that the Christian life is totally devoid of happiness and pleasure—quite the contrary!—but merely to highlight the way in which we as Christians should view hardship. We should not be afraid of its coming, because we have a Father who will never leave us nor forsake us, who will strengthen us and sustain us. And we certainly should not let a fear of potential suffering keep us from communing with our Father in prayer!

Advising someone against praying for patience, then, (or for kindness or self-control) not only can lead to a wrong view of God but also can hinder communication with Him.

The second (and perhaps more obvious) problem with saying “Don’t pray for patience” is that doing so is encouraging someone not to pray for a virtue that is clearly biblical to possess. Patience is an element of the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22); it is something that believers are exhorted to “put on” (Col. 3:12); and it is the goal of Paul’s prayer for strength for the Colossians (Col. 1:11).

If patience is evidence of our being filled with God’s Spirit, then why on earth would we want to avoid asking for it? Why would we quench the Spirit’s work in our lives by balking at the idea of being taught patience? After all, it’s not like we aren’t already in a position of waiting for things. Would it not be ultimately for our good to pray for help learning to be patient as we wait, to pray for the Holy Spirit to fill us to the point where patience becomes characteristic of our being? I daresay it would be.

So next time you think twice about praying for patience, ask yourself which would be better: to live a frustrating life of impatient waiting or to be empowered to exhibit patience while you wait.