Nobody enjoys waiting. Scripture never pretends we should. What it does show is that patience is strength at work, and it grows best in the seasons we would skip if we could.
The power of patience is the Spirit given ability to keep trusting, working and doing good while the thing you are waiting for has not arrived. It is strength held steady, not passivity.
James compares it to a farmer who plants, tends and watches the sky. He cannot make the rain fall, but he does not walk off the field either. That is the posture Scripture calls patience, and it is how God grows people while He grows the harvest.
I have yet to meet someone who enjoys waiting. As a mama of five, I’m pretty sure it’s my kids’ least favorite word. When they want a snack but I’m nursing the baby, they’re told to wait. When they want to run downstairs on Christmas morning and I need to grab my camera first, they’re told to wait. When my eyes have barely opened in the morning and their energy is already on 1,000, they’re told to keep it down and wait. Come on, mamas, I know I’m not the only one.
Yet when my heavenly Father tells me to wait, I’m all of a sudden impatient, complaining and wondering why on earth I have to. Like a kid, I’m eager for what’s coming because I know it’s going to be so good. The Bible pictures waiting as a field in late winter: quiet on top, a great deal happening underneath.
The farmer in James 5 is waiting, and he is also working his land every single day.
Resignation says nothing will change, so stop hoping. Patience says something is still coming, so keep going.
The psalmists waited out loud and asked God how long. Patience does not require a smile. It requires that you stay turned toward Him.
Waiting on God is being okay sitting in the passenger seat. The best example I have is driving with my husband. Wives, please don’t leave me out here to dry. It took me basically the first nine years of our marriage to stop co-piloting when he drives. He has his style of driving and I have a very different one. But when I sit in that passenger seat, I’m giving up my way of directing the trip to respect his. Now imagine being God, with the whole route worked out, while we keep taking turns that were never on the map. You’d be pretty annoyed. Yet God isn’t annoyed one bit.
Galatians 5:22 lists patience in the fruit of the Spirit. The NIV says forbearance, older translations say longsuffering. Either way, fruit is not manufactured by gritting your teeth. It grows from a living connection.
We have written about the side of this word that deals with people, being slow to anger and what long suffering in the Bible means. This post is about the other side: what patience does in you when the problem is not a person but a season, the wait for a job, a spouse, a child, a healing, an answer.
Patience is not a personality type some people were born with. It is fruit, and the Spirit grows it in anyone who stays connected to Jesus through the long middle of a season.
“Be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm, because the Lord’s coming is near.”
James 5:7 to 8In Israel the farming year hung on two rains. The autumn rain softened hard ground for planting, and the spring rain filled out the grain before harvest. A farmer could plow, sow and weed, but the two things that decided his year came from the sky.
Plowing and sowing are hard labor. Patience keeps its hands busy with whatever is in reach.
No effort brings rain. Patience admits some things only God can supply, and lets Him.
Verse 8 tells them to strengthen their hearts: steady inside when the outside is slow.
Verse 9: don’t grumble against one another. Long waits make us short with each other.
One detail matters for reading this honestly. When James said the Lord’s coming was near and the Judge was at the door, he meant near to them. He wrote to Jewish believers before AD 70, and the coming he pointed to was the covenant judgment on Jerusalem within that generation, the end of the age Jesus had predicted. God kept His word inside their horizon. We stand on the other side of that kept promise, which is good reason to trust Him with our smaller horizons.
The Theology of Work Project puts it well: “patience at work is a form of dependence on God”.
Then James reaches for Job and switches words. The farmer’s patience in verses 7 and 8 is the same word family Paul uses for the fruit of the Spirit. Job’s perseverance in verse 11 is a different word, endurance under a heavy load. Some seasons ask you to wait. Some ask you to carry. Both end in “what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.” The story of Job in the Bible and James’s call to count it all joy carry this further.
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Manage My Giving"Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver."2 Corinthians 9:7
Hebrews 6:12 tells us to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.
God promises a great nation to a childless man.
Ten years in, Sarah suggests her servant Hagar, and Abraham agrees. Ishmael is born when Abraham is eighty six, and Hagar pays for the shortcut most of all.
Twenty five years after the promise, it arrives. Hebrews 6:15 sums it up: “And so after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised.”
Sold by his brothers at seventeen, falsely accused, imprisoned, then forgotten by the cupbearer for two full years. He stands before Pharaoh at thirty.
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”
Notice two things. First, neither waited perfectly. Abraham and Sarah chose the Hagar shortcut together, so it should not be pinned on her alone as sermons often do. God was faithful anyway. Patience is grown into, not passed on the first try.
Second, Joseph did not sit still for thirteen years. He ran Potiphar’s house, then the prison, serving the people in front of him while his dream looked further away every year. That is the power of patience in practice: faithfulness in the small room you are in while God works on the larger one you cannot see. See our studies of Abraham in the Bible and Joseph in the Bible.
“I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.”
Psalm 40:1 to 3Psalm 40 begins at the end of a wait. The new song did not come before the wait. It came out of it.
Psalm 27 ends in the middle of one: “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” The command wraps around courage, because waiting takes strength and God supplies it. Isaiah 40:31 promises renewed strength to those who hope in the Lord, and we unpack that verse in wait on the Lord.
Romans 8:24 to 25 explains why patience and hope always travel together: “But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” Paul wrote this inside the covenant transition, and the principle holds for every season since. Patience is what hope looks like while it is still hope.
If you are still waiting, it is your fault. God never delays, we do. Fix whatever is wrong with you and the answer will come.
Joseph waited thirteen years for doing right. Job suffered as a righteous man. Some waits are about timing, other people, or reasons we may never be told.
A long wait is not proof that you are doing something wrong. That idea gets used on couples waiting for children, single people waiting for a spouse, and the sick waiting for healing, and it piles shame on top of pain. Sometimes we do delay ourselves through fear or disobedience, and the Holy Spirit will show us. But the default assumption should never be that the person waiting is the problem.
The opposite error is just as wrong: sit back and God will drop it in your lap. Patience keeps praying, working and doing good. And one more popular line, that God will never give you more than you can handle, is not in the Bible. What is in the Bible is that He will not leave you to handle it alone.
In James 5:7, what does the farmer do while he waits for the rain?
The farmer plows, sows and tends, but the autumn and spring rains are out of his hands. James holds him up as the picture of patience: active work joined to honest dependence on God.
Some waits last years, and some come after a loss. I know that kind of wait.
In December of 2018, I suffered a miscarriage. Our baby boy, at just 15 weeks, went into glory with the Father, and to say I was devastated would be a huge understatement. Jude was going to be our fifth child and our last. Before my husband and I got married, we both agreed we wanted five children. I thought Jude was the end of that season of our lives. Little did I know it was just the beginning in many ways.
One of the questions I kept asking was, why me? As I grieved and began to heal, I found myself in a season of waiting. I thought I would be eager to try for another baby right away, yet I found myself waiting, and at first I didn’t know why. Some of you know exactly what you’re waiting for. I had no clue. All I knew was that I had to wait.
Waiting is not something I’m good at, and my husband could testify to that all day every day. Once I know what I want, I’m eager to get it, put it together, style it and make it fit into my world as quickly as possible. The journey after our miscarriage really ironed out some of that impatience. I’m a work in progress, y’all. Thank God for grace.
Since then I’ve experienced the beauty in the wait, the beauty in the unknown and being okay with not knowing. God is at work in our waiting, even when we can’t see it. I embraced the wait so fully that we waited until birth to find out the gender of our gorgeous rainbow baby, Eden, which was a total shock to us and to all our friends and family.
If you have been waiting a long time for a child, a marriage, a healing, a prodigal to come home, or work that finally fits, you are allowed to be tired. You are allowed to grieve the time. The psalmists did both.
Your wait is not a verdict on your faith, and it is not God holding out on you to teach you a lesson. Jesus never treated hurting people that way. He is with you in the waiting.
If the waiting has started to feel heavy and lonely, please do not carry it alone. Let somebody pray with you. You can send us a prayer request and a real person will pray for you.
“Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.”
Galatians 6:9Paul promises the harvest at the proper time, not on our timetable. Keep loving, serving and showing up. The waiting season is growing season.
Our study of the kairos meaning explains God’s right moment. If your wait has left you heartsick, hope deferred makes the heart sick was written with you in mind.
You do not have to feel patient to be patient. Staying turned toward God, doing the next good thing and refusing to quit is patience, even on the days it feels like barely holding on.
Jesus knows about waiting. He was about thirty when His public ministry began (Luke 3:23), after years the Gospels barely mention. He was patient with disciples who missed the point again and again. And Paul says Christ displayed His patience on him personally, the former persecutor, as an example for everyone who would believe.
That is the heart of the power of patience. It starts with a God who has been patient with every one of us and whose Spirit now grows that same patience in us. When you wait with Him, you are not waiting on an absent God. You are being made more like His Son, and the Kingdom is already at work in your life right now.
For related reading, see what the Bible says about patience, the fruits of the Holy Spirit, and how to rest in the Lord. And if you are on Long Island and want people to wait alongside you, plan a visit to Sound of Heaven.
The power of patience is fruit the Spirit grows in waiting seasons: like the farmer, you do your part, trust God with the rain, refuse to turn on people or give up doing good, and let Jesus, who is endlessly patient with you, form you while you wait.
Tell us what you are waiting for. Somebody at Sound of Heaven will pray with you through it.
In the Bible, the power of patience is the Spirit given strength to keep trusting God, working and doing good while what you are waiting for has not arrived yet. It is not passivity. James 5:7 pictures a farmer who plows and sows, then waits for rains he cannot produce. Patience joins faithful effort to honest dependence on God, and Galatians 5:22 lists it in the fruit of the Spirit.
Yes. Galatians 5:22 names it in the fruit of the Spirit alongside love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The NIV translates it as forbearance and older translations say longsuffering. Calling it fruit means we do not manufacture it through willpower. The Holy Spirit grows it as we stay connected to Jesus, and that growth often happens most in waiting seasons.
James points to a farmer in ancient Israel who depended on two rains, the autumn rain that softened the ground for planting and the spring rain that filled out the grain before harvest. The farmer worked hard, but the rain was out of his hands. James tells his readers to be patient the same way, standing firm and not grumbling. He also told them the Lord’s coming was near, which for them meant the covenant judgment on Jerusalem in AD 70.
About twenty five years. Genesis 12:4 says Abraham was seventy five when he left Haran with God’s promise of a great nation, and Genesis 21:5 says he was one hundred when Isaac was born. Along the way he and Sarah tried the shortcut of Hagar, and Ishmael was born when Abraham was eighty six. God stayed faithful anyway. Hebrews 6:15 sums it up: after waiting patiently, Abraham received what was promised.
Keep talking to Him honestly, the way the psalmists did. Keep doing the next good thing, as Galatians 6:9 urges, because the harvest comes at the proper time. Stay close to people who will pray with you. A long wait is not a verdict on your faith. And read Psalm 40, which starts at the end of a wait and shows God turning, hearing and lifting.