In an article in The Journal of Modern Ministry a couple years ago, Lou Priolo offered a seven-fold definition of patience:
- Patience is the ability to accept a difficult situation from the Lord without accusing Him of wrongdoing or giving Him a deadline to remove it.
- Patience is the ability, while experiencing physical or mental pain, to keep one’s emotions (grief, fear, and anger) from developing into sinful thoughts, words, attitudes, or actions (especially towards God).
- Patience is the ability to endure tribulation without resorting to any sinful means of deliverance.
- Patience is the ability to continue in suffering while continuing to acknowledge and be thankful for God’s sovereignty, justice, wisdom, love, and goodness.
- Patience is the ability to keep a biblical perspective about one’s troubles by not magnifying a tolerable trial so that it appears to one’s mind as an intolerable one.
- Patience is the ability to submit one’s own will to both the revealed will and decreed will of God, even though such submission causes personal pain and suffering.
- Patience is the ability to obtain and rejoice in the assurance that one’s present distress will produce godly character which is of great value not only in this life, but also in the next.
Words of Grace 