12 Bible verses about patience
A collection to read, save, and share · 12 verses
Patience in scripture is rarely passive. It is closer to endurance than to calm.
The Greek word behind much of the New Testament’s teaching on it means something like remaining under a weight without putting it down — which is a far more strenuous picture than the one we usually have.
These verses cover both kinds: patience with people who are slow to change, and patience with God when the answer is taking years. Neither is a personality trait. Both are described as something grown.
Waiting on God
“Wait for the LORD. Be strong, and let your heart take courage. Yes, wait for the LORD.”
Waiting is paired with courage, not with resignation. The repetition at the end suggests the writer needed telling twice, which is honest.
“Those who wait for the LORD will renew their strength. They will mount up with wings like eagles. They will run, and not be weary. They will walk, and not faint.”
The order descends — soaring, running, walking. Most of scripture’s promises about endurance end with walking, because that is what most of life requires.
“The LORD is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that a man should hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the LORD.”
Quietly is the difficult word. Not silently — there is plenty of noise in Lamentations — but without frantic activity to force the outcome.
“For the vision is yet for the appointed time. It hurries toward the end, and won’t prove false. Though it takes time, wait for it, because it will surely come.”
Written to a prophet who had been complaining that God was slow. The answer is not that he is wrong about the delay, only about what the delay means.
“But if we hope for that which we don’t see, we wait for it with patience.”
Hope and patience are two halves of the same posture here. You only need patience for the things you still expect.
“Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient over it.”
The farming image is deliberate. Growth cannot be hurried by wanting it more, and the work in the meantime is ordinary and unglamorous.
Patience with people
“With all lowliness and humility, with patience, bearing with one another in love.”
Bearing with is not the same as approving of. Scripture assumes Christians will find each other difficult and calls the enduring of that a form of love.
“Put on therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, a heart of compassion, kindness, lowliness, humility, and perseverance.”
Put on is clothing language — a daily, deliberate act rather than a change of temperament. You can do this on a day you do not feel patient at all.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control.”
Fruit grows; it is not manufactured. If patience is a fruit, then the way to more of it is attention to the root rather than strain at the branch.
“He who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who has a quick temper displays folly.”
Patience is treated here as intelligence rather than as mildness. The patient person is the one who has understood something the quick-tempered one has missed.
“Love is patient and is kind.”
The first thing said about love in the most quoted passage on it. Not passionate, not selfless — patient. It is the least romantic quality and the one listed first.
“Let us not be weary in doing good, for we will reap in due season, if we don’t give up.”
The condition is at the end and it is the whole difficulty. Due season is not defined, and that is precisely what makes the not giving up hard.
Carry one with you today
Patience is practised in small places. Choose the person or the wait that irritates you most this week and pray one of these verses before you engage with it.