by Dawn Lewis

Created on: July 15, 2010

Praying is an essential part of any Christian’s life, or it should be.  But we have to know what and why we are praying to have our prayers be effective.  Praying is in essence a conversation with God, our Father.  We should use our time of prayer to talk with God and praise Him for the many gifts and blessings He gives us each and every day, and to thank Him for our daily lives, the opportunities and chances He provides for us.  We should also use this time of prayer to pray for forgiveness in our sinful ways, and to ask for prayers for healing, safety, health, and much more. 

When we pray for “patience” we are really asking God to open up opportunities for us to learn to be patient.  In our hurry up world of today, we don’t seem to find patience around the corner, and when we need to be patient, we find ourselves struggling to hold on for that small bit of time to get the answers we are seeking.  Remember, when we pray to God for something, God will determine what the best thing is for us and when the best time is.  That may mean that our prayer won’t be answered according to what we want, but rather according to God’s will for our lives.

Perhaps when we are praying for patience we need to examine why we want patience and in what that patience will do for us. For example, we may have had a job interview for a really great job and we want a call from the employer offering us the position.  So, we pray to God for patience for this answer.  However, what we should be praying for instead is that the employer sees our qualifications and what we can bring to their organization, and put our trust in God that He will lead us in the right the direction.  Then, once we understand what we really are asking for of God’s help in our lives, patience will follow.

Again, in our hurry up world we tend to take shortcuts to achieve “instant gratification.”  In our prayers with God, we must learn to ask for what we really need, and place our trust in Him to do His will in our lives.  When we pray for patience, God gives us opportunities to be patient, but we don’t always see those opportunities.  For instance, say you are driving somewhere and you are in a hurry to get there, but you seem to be hitting every street light red and you have people in front of you, no room to pass, and they are driving less than the speed limit.  This is an opportunity to learn patience.  The more we can breathe and allow the situations to happen as they will, the more we will learn patience.  God helps us by giving us these opportunities.

God listens to His children praying every day, and He does what he feels is best for us, even if the prayers we pray are unanswered in our eyes; that is God’s answer to us, that perhaps this isn’t the best opportunity.  Patience is something we have to learn and we have to rely on God in all that we do.

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