I Was Just Thinking … About Patient Faith

The biblical writers frequently remind us of the necessity to believe God. Hebrews 11:6 says, for example, “Without faith it is impossible to please him. For whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” but this same book of Hebrews also stresses our great need to be patient. “You have need of endurance, so that you may do the will of God and receive what is promised” (10:36). In chapter 6, verse 11, this same author explicitly stressed that both persevering faith and patience are essential: “Be … followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

So patience is an essential aspect of genuine faith. Many passages indicate that faith is a banking of our confidence on what God has promised. According to Romans 4:20-21, Abraham “grew strong in his faith—which gave glory to God—fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.” And Paul said in Acts 27:25, “I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told.”

Banking our confidence on God is what the Bible often means by the word “hope.” In other words, “faith” and “hope” are closely related concepts. Once we grasp the fact that faith is essentially a certain hope, where our confidence is banked on what God has promised, it becomes clear why patience is so vital to faith. Since faith is a sense of certainty that God will do what he has promised to do, there is often a time lag between God’s making a promise and our believing it, on the one hand, and God’s fulfillment of what he has promised, on the other. So while we bank our hope on God’s promise, we must have patience to await the fulfillment.

To be sure, there is one promise which God has made, which he fulfills immediately when we believe it, and this is his promise to forgive our sins. The moment that Abraham believed God, he was declared righteous (Genesis 15:6; Romans 4:3-5; Galatians 3:6). But there are other promises for whose fulfillment we must wait. God has promised to answer our prayers much more readily and wisely than any earthly farther could ever grant his child’s request: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him” (Matthew 7:11). God may give us, immediately, just what we ask for, but often in his loving wisdom he delays granting our request until a much better time, and then responds to it in much better terms than we ever had in mind in our prayer. Consequently, to have faith in God’s many promises in Scripture to answer our prayers, we must be willing to have what one hymn writer called “the patience of unanswered prayer.” The psalmist said, “I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. He drew me up from the desolate pit, … and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure” (Psalm 40:1-2).

The life of Joseph provides an example of how patiently waiting upon God results in the fulfillment of his promise to work all things together for good. Joseph’s brothers had sold him into slavery in Egypt. He became a slave in Potiphar’s house, where he was unjustly accused and cast into Pharaoh’s dungeon. Then, after the passage of several years, God delivered Joseph from prison and made him the ruler of all Egypt; so that during a time of extended drought, he alone had authority to dispense the food that had been stored up during the preceding bounteous years. When his brothers came to Egypt hoping to purchase food, Joseph gave it to them and invited them to move their families to Egypt and settle there.

During those years when Joseph served as a slave in Potiphar’s house, and during the years he languished in a filthy dungeon, he could not see how God was remaining true to his promise to work all things together for good. But when he saw how God had worked during all those years of tribulation to make it possible for him now to keep his family alive, he saw the fulfillment. Thus, he was able to say to his brothers, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).

During those years of slavery and imprisonment, Joseph surely had to have great patience in order to keep on believing God. But Genesis 39 emphasizes that during those difficult times Joseph had a special sense of God’s presence with him (vss. 2, 3, 21, 23). Without God’s presence to comfort him in such circumstances, neither Joseph, nor anyone else, would have the fortitude to go on believing God. But the Bible makes it clear that God does provide us with a remarkable sense of his peace and comfort as we trust him during times of tribulation and patiently wait for him to answer our prayers. In 2 Corinthians 1:6 Paul said, “You experience [comfort] when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer.” Likewise, according to Romans 15:5, God is the “God of patience and consolation.” This means that while God, in his loving wisdom, often requires patient waiting on our part, yet he will abundantly supply us with comfort during the waiting periods. As Psalm 23 puts it, even when we walk through a valley of deep darkness, where things look quite bleak, yet we are comforted by a sense of God’s presence, so that we fear no evil. “You rod and your staff, they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4).

Therefore, God provides us with much help in obeying his command to “be patient in tribulation” (Romans 12:12), in that he comforts us as we trustingly wait for his deliverances. But in order to enjoy this comfort, and to have that staying power that persists to the fulfillment of the promise, we must, like Paul, purpose to “set our hope on God that he will deliver us …” (2 Corinthians 1:10; cf. 1 Timothy 4:10).

Daniel P. Fuller
November 1977