Patience and Faith

I’ve noticed in the scriptures that faith and patience often go together.  Here are some examples:

·         Paul praised the Saints at Thessalonica this way: “We ourselves glory in you in the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that ye endure” (2 Thessalonians 1:4).

·         To the Hebrews Paul encouraged the Saints to be like those who “through faith and patience inherit the promises” (Hebrews 6:12).

·         James taught “that the trying of your faith worketh patience” (James 1:3)

·         The Lord said to the people of Thyatira, “I know thy works, and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience” (Revelation 2:19).

·         In writing about the people of Alma who were oppressed by the Lamanites, Mormon taught us, “The Lord seeth fit to chasten his people; yea, he trieth their patience and their faith” (Mosiah 23:21).  Later in the same story Mormon told us “that so great was their faith and their patience that the voice of the Lord came unto them again, saying: Be of good comfort, for on the morrow I will deliver you out of bondage” (Mosiah 24:16).    

·         Alma spoke to the Zoramites about the need to nourish the word like a tree “by your faith with great diligence, and with patience….  And because of your diligence and your faith and your patience with the word in nourishing it, that it may take root in you, behold, by and by ye shall pluck the fruit thereof….  Then, my brethren, ye shall reap the rewards of your faith, and your diligence, and patience” (Alma 32:41-43).  Amulek then summarized the words of Alma to the Zoramites saying, “He hath exhorted you unto faith and to patience” (Alma 34:3).

·         Captain Moroni spoke of his faithful soldiers to Pahoran, writing of “their exceeding faith, and their patience in their tribulations” (Alma 60:26). 

·         The Lord told Oliver, “Be patient; be sober; be temperate; have patience, faith, hope and charity” (D&C 6:19).

·         In our day the Lord has commanded us to receive the words of the prophet “in all patience and faith” (D&C 21:5).

So why do these two virtues appear so often together in the scriptures?  It seems to me that we can’t truly have faith in Jesus Christ without developing the patience to do His will and wait for His promised blessings.  The scriptures teach us to “wait upon the Lord”—on other words, we must have patience as we wait for the promised blessings that faith offers us (see Isaiah 8:17).  Elder Oaks gave a talk about the timing of the Lord and taught how part of faith is trusting the Lord’s timing: “We cannot have true faith in the Lord without also having complete trust in the Lord’s will and in the Lord’s timing” (see here).  In other words, patience is needed as we wait on the Lord’s timing for the blessings we seek in our lives.  As President Uchtdorf put it, “Patience means to abide in faith, knowing that sometimes it is in the waiting rather than in the receiving that we grow the most” (Continue in Patience).