Patience produces lasting spiritual growth. You’re not convinced. Patience never feels finished when you’re inside it. It usually feels like delay. Like being asked to slow down when everything in you wants resolution.

Wait!

That word can tighten the chest. Waiting feels motionless, but it’s not. Waiting requires something of you. It exposes what you want fixed now and what you are willing to wait for. Patience begins there, not as something we admire from a distance, but as something placed right in front of us.

Wait!!

That second time feels different. Now it feels personal. Now it is inconvenient. Now it feels like it is taking longer than it should. You feel the frustration growing. The longer it takes, the more frustrated you are. This is where we start wondering whether waiting is doing any good at all.

Are you missing something?

Look closely at Jehovah. When he described himself to Moses, two expressions appeared together. He is “slow to anger” and “abundant in loyal love.” Those thoughts appear together again in the Scriptures. Jehovah’s loyal love does not disappear when people disappoint him. He remains involved. He gives time. He warns. He corrects. He forgives when there is repentance.

He waits. — Exodus 34:6; Psalm 103:8

Israel certainly gave Jehovah reasons to stop waiting. They repeated mistakes. They forgot what they had already learned. At times they turned away after experiencing his care firsthand. Yet Jehovah kept reaching out. He sent prophets. He gave warnings and comfort. When they cried out, he heard them. Year after year, generation after generation, his patience remained active. Not because the wrong did not matter, but because the people still mattered to him. — Nehemiah 9:30, 31

Take note of this. Patience is not weakness. It is love staying involved when it would be easier to give up.

Now look even closer.

Love is part of the fruitage of the spirit. So is patience. But when the Bible describes what love actually does, it begins with something interesting: “Love is patient.” The study note gives another way those words can be understood: “love is long-suffering.” — Galatians 5:22; 1 Corinthians 13:4

Long-suffering.

There is something in that expression that simply saying “wait” may not fully capture. Love can be called on to wait when waiting hurts. It may have to endure disappointment. It may have to see the same weakness again. Yet love does not immediately decide that the person is finished. It stays long enough for patience to have time to do its work.

Maybe that helps us understand why Jehovah’s loyal love and his being slow to anger fit so naturally together. Loyal love stays. Patience gives it time to stay. We do not need to separate the two thoughts too sharply. We can simply watch what Jehovah does.

And then watch Jesus.

The night before his death, when the pressure on him must have been enormous, his apostles argued again about who among them was the greatest. Again. They had been with Jesus for years. They had heard him teach humility. They had watched him live it. They had even argued about greatness before. And here they were, doing it again. — Mark 9:33-37; Luke 22:24

Jesus corrected their thinking. But he did not treat their repeated weakness as proof that they were beyond help. He did not confuse slow growth with rebellion. He did not give up on men simply because they had not yet become what he knew they could become.

He stayed.

He taught.

He waited.

That patience looks familiar, doesn’t it?

Jesus was showing them what he had seen in his Father. Jehovah had patiently dealt with imperfect people for generations, and now Jesus patiently dealt with imperfect men sitting at the table with him. Their weakness was real. So was his love for them. And because the love remained, so did the patience.

Later, those same men did change. Men who had argued about greatness learned to serve. They endured hardship. They cared for congregations. They spent themselves for others. The growth was not there when Jesus first corrected them. It was not even complete the last night he spent with them.

It needed time.

So perhaps there are moments when we see a weakness in someone and immediately know what needs to change. We may even be right. But knowing what needs to change is not the same as knowing how long change should take.

Wait!

Not because wrong does not matter. Not because correction never has a place. But because Jehovah may still be working with someone who is unfinished. Patience leaves room for counsel to settle, for an example to be remembered, for a heart to soften, for spiritual growth that we cannot yet see.

Love is patient.

Long-suffering.

Sometimes love stays long enough to see what impatience would have walked away from.

Patience does not resolve things quickly. It leaves… unfinished… still in motion. And maybe that is the point. Patience keeps us close to Jehovah long enough for his work to continue — in others, and in us.

Wait.