In our home we have what we call a patience test. It originated with my 13 year old son. “Patience test,” he will say with a smile and then squeeze or tickle or poke me somewhere for 5 whole seconds. The rule is I can’t deny the patience test. I can only endure it. I usually do, because it’s then my turn!

Sometimes God comes to us and says, “patience test”. The test may last 5 seconds, or 5 minutes, or 5 hours, or even 5 years. We can’t deny it. We can only endure it. 

Or we could deny it. But then we would lose what only patience can produce in us: steadfastness.   

Steadfastness is a capacity to endure. And to endure something of course implies a hardship or a difficulty. We don’t like this. In fact, if possible, we will go out of our way to avoid it. But our capacity to endure determines the distance we are able to run and the weight we are able to carry. The testing of our faith is necessary for the life God has called us to live. 

God is not interested in giving you a comfortable and easy life. He’s interested in giving you a healthy and fruitful life in him. What would that look like? At the very least it would look like growing in the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)—the Spirit forming within us the character traits and the affections of Jesus. So God as the great Vinedresser will take a fruit-bearing branch and use the cultivating and pruning circumstances of life that it might bear more fruit (John 15:1-2).

It’s in testing that our knowledge of our ourselves and of God can grow. It’s in difficulty that our prayer and worship life can deepen. It’s in hardship that we can come to grips with our own weaknesses and God’s grace. It’s in the desert that we can come to “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8). It’s on the cross that we can come to behold most clear and full the love of God for us.

There is a measure of pain and suffering in every patience test. It’s not that pain and suffering are good in themselves nor that God calls them good. But he calls good what he can produce through or bring out of them: a steadfastness of faith. It’s not only our capacity to endure which God grows. He encourages us all along the way, because he’s also growing our capacity to see, to know, to love, to trust him more.