In a scriptural sense, patience means to maintain your trust in God while receiving something less than what is merited. Your patience is a manifestation of your trust in God or lack thereof.
Patience is not just an accessory to God’s plan. It is an essential step in the path of what we seek because the absence of it will prevent us from doing the things that we need to do to obtain the greatest joy.
In tough times, it might seem like God is arbitrarily punishing or testing you. There is nothing arbitrary about God.
He does all things according to his perfect knowledge. “But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.” (2 Nephi 2:24)
He does all things according to his character, and he is perfectly loving. “He doeth not anything save it be for the benefit of the world.....” (2 Nephi 26:24)
When he tries you, it is only to help you. If he is telling you that something is not right for right now, know that he has your best interest at heart, because he only does the things that benefit you.
When you trust that God knows all things, you can find rest in your trust in him and in his eventual justice, even when you don’t know exactly how or when it will be fulfilled.
God not only knows all things, he also loves you more than you love yourself. Submitting to him in all things, no matter how foolish they may seem in your very limited perspective, is the absolutely optimal path to maximize your joy.
Better understanding God’s love for you can empower you to have greater patience. Paul wrote:
1 Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:
2 By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
3 And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
4 And patience, experience; and experience, hope: (Romans 5)
Paul is illustrating that we acquire patience through first believing in the love and wisdom of God. Hope in these qualities of God will give us power to endure situations that appear negative in our limited understanding, but are actually pathways to greater joy in God’s perfect understanding. As we submit to God’s will, we will find time and again that every tribulation we encounter is nothing more than what is precisely necessary to bring us to a state of greater joy than we previously enjoyed. With every cycle through this process of hope and fulfilled experience, we gain greater and greater trust in God, and more and more patience.
This cycle of hope through affliction to experience to greater trust in God is what James was describing when he said: “...the trying of your faith worketh patience.” (James 1:3)
When God’s will requires waiting, the waiting part is just as important as doing the rest of his will: “For ye have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye might receive the promise.” (Hebrews 10:36) In terms of cause and effect, the cause of your blessings is not limited to living his commandments, but also often includes the need to wait for God to fulfill his promises in a timeline different from your own.
When we trust God, we will find great strength in the belief that the situations he places us in will lead to greater joy than we could have found of our own accord. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:9)
Our organic impulses are insufficient to lead us to the glorious end God intends, as “...the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)
Good things only come from God, and yielding to them is essential if we will obtain all the joy he desires for us:
For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Mosiah 3:19)
Note the use of “inflict.” The truth is that God never inflicts anything on anyone. It just seems that way to those with limited understanding. He doesn’t create cause and effect. He does a great deal to insulate us, to varying degrees, from it. What we perceive as him inflicting trials or dealing punishment is nothing more than his stepping out of the way to expose us to greater degrees of the consequences of reality.
Everything he does leads to better outcomes. All those who trust in God will eventually see that. Those who trusted in him will have everlasting joy in what they received by following him and in comprehending how much he loves them, while those who chose not to trust him will experience great sorrow, anguish, and pain through the everpresent knowledge that he did everything possible to guide them to a better place but they stubbornly refused.
How much are you willing to go through in order to obtain the joy God would like to give you? He has unlimited joy. If you seek unlimited joy, you must develop unlimited trust in him, because to obtain it will require you to walk through greater and greater difficulty.