One person will be saying that he needs more patience in his life, and someone else will say, "Well, you know what happens when you pray for patience." Then everyone else will chuckle and nod knowingly, as though sharing an inside joke. "Never pray for patience," someone will say.
The idea behind these comments is that when one prays for patience, God will send him many trials and hard times in order to stretch and grow that person's patience. While I realize that oftentimes these comments are made in jest, there is still an underlying idea that God is contractually bound to send tribulations to His children who dare pray for patience.
I think this view of God is incorrect and harmful for two reasons. First, God is not bound by some cosmic law to rain down hardship on those who ask Him for patience. Second, even if He were, we as Christians are supposed to rejoice in tribulation, not run from it.
The book of James tells us that the testing of our faith through trials produces patience. So yes, of course God will sometimes cause His followers to fall into hard times in order to bring about greater patience in their lives.
But major trials are not God's only means of building up our patience! He can use good times and blessings to remind us to be patient in the bad times. He can use a good sermon, a faithful friend, minor everyday annoyances, or even give us patience directly through His Spirit inside us. He can give us patience however He wants: He's God!
One must have a very limiting view of God's power to think that He has only one way of accomplishing His goals for our lives.
Why is it just patience we do this with, anyway? Why don't we say, "Oh, don't pray for self-control, you're sure to be tempted." That logic works just as well. "Don't pray for greater love, God is sure to send an unlovable person into you life." What if we had this view about every prayer request? Our entire prayer life would be destroyed! And of course, no Christian would ever want that. So why do we do it with patience?
Even if God could only give us patience through trials, what makes us think that we could avoid those trials by not asking? Does God only dole out hardship when His followers ask for it? I don't think so. Just ask Israel. Never praying for patience is not some cosmic loophole that handcuffs God, people. He's not up there in heaven with a lightning bolt in his hand, saying, "Oh if only Caleb would ask for patience, then I could smite him."
Again, thinking that in any way we can avoid trials by refraining from asking for patience shows a very limited opinion of God's power.
Lastly, even if every prayer for patience equaled an automatic tribulation, we should keep asking anyway! James 1: 2-3 says, "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience."
We should be rejoicing when God sends us hardship! Like Paul and Silas, we should be singing God's praises while sitting in prison! If we could guarantee hard times by asking for patience, a Biblical perspective would still encourage us to keep firing up those prayers. Trying to avoid tribulations through a lack of prayer shows a faulty and unbiblical attitude.
I hope these jumbled thoughts make sense. I, for one, will continue praying for patience just like every other virtue.
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