Patience: Hurry Up and Wait
by Billy Strother
I am gifted with impatience. Patience is not my natural state. As a kid playing baseball, I never could wait for the right pitch. On every team I possessed both the homerun record and the strikeout record simultaneously!
As a young man in Army basic training, from day one, we lived the military maxim: “Hurry up and wait!” I vividly remember Drill Sergeant Greathouse, a mountain of a man whose deep, southern, booming voice, one which made James Earl Jones sound like a soprano, woke us up every morning at 4:00 am. He would come into our room in the darkness and flip the light on … and, in a scarily pleasant voice, wearing a fake smile and sunglasses, shout, “Hey, where’s all my buddies at? Come on out here, buddies! It is time to play, buddies!” All the while, he was literally flipping our beds over … with us still in them! He gave us 5 minutes to get dressed in shorts, t-shirts, and army boots, to line up outside for calisthenics. And then, while it was still dark, cold, and raining, we waited … and waited … and waited at attention for him to come outside and lead the exercises. But it was usually a half hour or so before he showed. He went to eat breakfast while we waited in the dark, cold rain! Those occasions were where I first lived the Army maxim: “Hurry up and wait.”
Much of life seems the same to us in about every context. At the airport, we are required to hurry up and get there two hours early and …wait. At medical appointments we are required to get there 15 minutes early, and then wait … for an hour past our appointment time. Even at church, we hurry to get there and after the sermon starts, we have to wait … and wait … and wait … for the end of the sermon! (Yup, a cheap shot, but I had fun with it.)
Much of our lives are hurry up and wait. Get a medical test … wait a week for results. Mothers have to wait nine months for a normally timed birth. Maybe your congregation is looking for a new preacher … some churches wait 2 years before finding the right ministry partner. Some churches hurry up, but do not wait on the right partner - a potential church family disaster in the making. Do you every hurry up to get ready for a date with your spouse and then wait and wait until the other person is ready? (By the way, since the invention of hair gel, beard trimmers, and skinny jeans, I think it is mostly wives waiting on their husbands to finish getting ready.)
As I write this, I am experiencing a life circumstance requiring a ridiculous amount of patience. So, this blog is as much to me as from me. Twelve days ago, I had surgery - a total artificial ankle replacement. The ankle I was born with was worn down to the nubs, causing swelling and chronic pain in walking. The surgery went well, and the healing has started. By all projections I will be walking well without pain. My problem? I cannot walk on the bionic ankle for at least two months! No walking and no driving - which also means no fishing, no hunting, no travel! Worse, for the first two weeks I am supposed to stay prone with my ankle elevated over my heart 90% of the time! Then, for two more weeks, the same for 60% of the time. If I don’t, then the swelling will increase, and I could jeopardize the long-term positive results of the implant. When I am allowed up, I tool around the house on a knee scooter, which is not as cool as a Harley.
My natural impatience at being unable to walk and live actively is at Defcon 1! Impatience is trying to take over and discourage. I am normally such a physically active person and outdoorsman. Now, all I can do is stay upright for short periods, write a little in spurts, or sit on the front porch a few minutes at a time watching the hummingbirds at the feeder. (I am so bored and frustrated, yesterday, while watching them, I wondered how many hummingbirds it would take to make a full meal. No, I did not test it. The winged flower lickers are safe.)
For years I prayed for patience, like it was something I did not have in my spiritual arsenal, and then God would throw it down onto me like a new suit of armor. But one day, I was reading Paul’s words in Galatians 5:22-23, the listing of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Patience Paul listed as fourth. Then it hit me: Since I have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, I received all of the Holy Spirit I am ever going to receive at my new birth, the full measure. I realized in that moment that I do not need to pray for patience. I already have it, through the power of the Holy Spirit living in me. Since the Spirit and His fruit dwell in me, instead of praying for what I thought I did not have, I just needed to find the willingness to release the fruit of patience already down there in me. I needed to get me out of the way so that patience could be set free in my daily living.
Now more than ever I need to release the fruit of patience. Perhaps you are in a situation that is trying your patience too. Perhaps, as a leader, you are frustrated with the slow pace of positive change in your church. Perhaps one of your children is acting in frustrating ways. Maybe there is a person in your small group who naturally frustrates you. Could it be you have not yet received that promised promotion? Maybe your spouse is going through a difficult time, injury, or dark emotional period and is not getting better fast enough for you. Would it be possible that you have been praying for something a long time, but your “yes” answer has not yet come?
What am I supposed to do, what are you supposed to do, when what we need most right now is a release of patience within us? We can participate in the release of patience when we are feeling impatient.
Pray. I do not mean to pray for patience to come, but for the patience we already have in us to be released. The fruit is in there. How often should we pray for the Spirit-given patience already in us to be released? We should pray the moment, each moment, every occasion, at the first hint of our old impatience rising.
Remember Habakkuk. Impatient and angry, opening his small book, the prophet Habakkuk leveled an indictment against God: “How long, O Lord, must I call for help? But you do not listen!” (Habakkuk 1:1, NLT). The Lord answers the impatient insolence of Habakkuk this way: “Look around the nations; look and be amazed! For I am doing something in your own day, something you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it,” (Habakkuk 1:5, NLT). What is God saying to the impatient prophet? I will paraphrase: “I am still at work. Your tiny little brain could never remotely comprehend all of the providential things I am doing behind the scenes to make things amazing in the future! So, chill! Show some patience!” In my impatience, patience is released, the Lord is in control behind the scenes in ways I could never comprehend, even if He told me.
Celebrate your future. No matter how painful the waiting, we can have courage in the Lord. That courage releases patience. Jeremiah wrote, “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord. ‘They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope’” (Jeremiah 29:11, NLT).
Guard your words. It is not only too easy to whine while we are waiting, but the opportunities to snap at those around us or to embrace the negative are myriad. People around us and their feelings, especially friends, family, and congregants, need us to speak always kindly and gratefully to them. They may not only be waiting with us, but they also probably have their own waiting circumstance with which they are struggling.
Pray some more. Praying tamps down the impatience so that patience is emboldened and released during the waiting.
Praise the Lord when the waiting has ended. It almost sounds silly, but so often when our waiting ends (the new job has come through, the healing has come, the emergency is over, the problem is resolved) we just move on happy and forget to stop and purposefully praise the Lord for his answer or deliverance.
An anonymous author has said, “Patience is not the ability to wait, but the ability to keep a good attitude while waiting.”
