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How to Show Patience in Marriage: 7 Ways Love Is Patient

Are there parts of the Bible you read and think, ‘That sounds nice but how do you live that way for real?’  1 Corinthians 13 is one of those passages for me.  Love is patient, God says but how do you show patience in marriage when marriage is hard?

Why Patience in Marriage is Important

Why is patience important in marriage?

Family is the hardest place to live out the principles of 1 Corinthians 13 that says, “love is patient.”  Right Ladies?  It is hard to be patient with the chaos and busyness of daily life.  This kind of love is just so… every day!  AHHH  It is hard right?!?!?!

Honestly, I am so encouraged that there is an entire chapter dedicated to love in the Bible.  It reassures me that I am not crazy to need love! 

It also helps me feel better about how hard it is to love well.  I mean, way back in the first churches people struggled to show patience in marriage the same way I struggle!  Whew, that makes me feel better.  How about you?

Love is important and patience is part of that so patience in marriage is important.  

What Does The Bible Say About Patience in Marriage?

What does God say about patience in a marriage… Biblical patience in marriage?

Can I be honest with you? I’ve been in church my whole life and some chapters in the Bible feel boring at first glance.

Do you ever feel that way?  Do you ever feel that way? 

1 Corinthians 13:1-8 gives us so many great tools to better show love, but I’ve read it so many times it feels boring.    When I started studying it a few years back, I was not expecting God to blow me away with powerful tools – but He did!  

Every word describing love in this passage is a verb! Verbs are action words – so love is not a feeling it is an action.    Love – as the early believers would have understood it – was not some flighty emotion.  Love was an action they chose to show.

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Yes, love is an action – not a feeling

Who Said Love is Patient and Kind?

For our study, we are looking at 1 Corinthians 13:4-8

“Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act disrespectfully or unbecomingly; it does not seek it’s own, is not provoked to anger, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness but rejoices with the truth;bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, enduring all thingsLove never fails.”

What is the meaning of 1 Corinthians 13? Over the course of this series, we will explore each verb.  We will see who said love is patient and kind.  Together we will learn what kind of love is used in 1 Corinthians 13 and explore the main idea of 1 Corinthians 13 as it applies to Marriage.  

First, we will look at patience in marriage.

Love is important and patience is part of that so patience in marriage is important. Click To Tweet

Love is Patient Means…

Patient in this passage means – Love does not lose heart while: enduring misfortunes bearing offenses and injuries of others See BlueLetterBible.org for definitions in the original text!

I don’t know about you, but I can be quick to lose my patience with the people around me.  Especially when things are hard and that’s just talking about patience with others.

1. Admit I Am Impatient in Marriage

How can I have patience with my husband?

I am even quicker to lose heart with my husband and criticize his mistakes and faults than with other people. My lack of patience over little things in married life is embarrassing. 

Especially when he does things that cause me hardship.  That is the hazard of living in each other’s personal space!  We hurt those we are closest to the most.

Truthfully, I have a mouth ready to rip him apart and put him in his place always pointing out his faults.  It shows a lack of self-control in my Spiritual life. Being impatient in a relationship (or running out of patience in a relationship) hurts deeply.

2. Shift

How do I stay calm in my marriage?

Showing patience to my husband can look like finding ways to encourage him instead of criticizing him for his flaws.

Showing patience in marriage, and patience with love to my husband requires a shift.  

We must shift from a critical reaction to a patient response to have a healthy marriage relationship.  These are my 7 practical ways to practice patience in marriage.

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How To Practice Patience In Marriage

How do you show patience in a marriage?

While I was learning how to practice patience in marriage God showed me that respect in marriage is tied in and I really didn’t understand that well either.  Since then here are some links to help you learn what I’ve learned. 

To show respect is to show patience with love when the other person understands love and respect differently… Biblical patience in marriage involves respect in marriage. 

If only men and women saw this issue from the same perspective I think there would be more happy marriages!

From looking over the many Bible verses about patience in marriage I see 7 clear patterns. Think of them as patience in marriage tips:  

  1. Admit
  2. Shift
  3. Pray
  4. Give grace
  5. Forgive
  6. Grow in the Fruit of the Spirit
  7. Accept the help of the Holy Spirit
We must shift from a critical reaction to a patient response. These are my two tricks to practice patience in marriage. Click To Tweet

3. Pray Before You Speak To Practice Patience

Losing patience in a relationship is normal.  It’s normal to react but if we make a choice to be patient in marriage we can change the norm.  Prayer is the first step in changing any negative patterns in our lives.  

Related Post: Offensive Fighting That Will Reclaim Hope in Marriage

Learning to pray before I speak has changed my marriage!

Prayer might seem passive, but it is the main offensive weapon God gave us to fight a real enemy who is attacking our marriage!

Learn to pray.  Make a commitment to become a prayer warrior wife and see patience become a natural part of your character.

Related Post: How To Begin Praying Big Prayers Beyond My Little Circle

4. Grace Changes The Atmosphere in Marriage

If you spend time studying marriage in the bible you see a theme of grace running through.  Just take a moment and Google:

  • Bible verses for married couples 
  • Bible verses about perseverance in marriage
  • patience in love Bible verse

You’ll see it over and over again.  Grace.  God gives us grace and then through the Holy Spirit living within us gives us the strength to show grace to others – including our spouse!

Related Post: How to Move from Surviving to Thriving in a Christian Marriage

A perspective shift is critical.

My husband is human and prone to mistakes, just like me; I need to forgive him when he messes up in the same way God forgives me when I mess up.

Related Post: 7 Benefits of Submission in Marriage

5. Forgiveness

Is Forgiveness an area you are struggling with? I’d love to share the pathway I found to truly forgive the pain, abuse, and betrayal that stole so many years of my life.  

I was stuck, unwilling to forgive.  I had to learn to release people, so I could walk in freedom! 

Forgiveness enabled me to live out love is patient.  Forgiveness helped me learn how to be patient with God and show patience in my marriage where I never could before.

 

6. The Fruit of The Spirit

Something that helps me in the midst of life’s challenges, to practice being a patient person is to see these concepts in other places.  The Apostle Paul writes about the importance of patience in 1 Corinthians 13 but the next time we see patience is in Galatians 5 where he teaches us the fruits of the spirit. 

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.” (Galatians 5:22-23 NASB)

Note that God’s Spirit grows these fruits into our lives slowly through the power of Jesus Christ. Patience is not the first fruit which is a good thing.  If we had patience but no love or joy or peace we would be miserable.  

7. The Holy Spirit Will Help

The important thing to learn here is that through growing in the loving relationships around us and with the power of the Holy Spirit at work in us, we can learn to not lose heart while enduring misfortunes and bearing offenses and injuries of others.  

That is what patience means, lovingly bearing with others’ immaturity in good times and bad times, on busy days and easy days.  

​Intentionally growing in the Fruit of the Spirit is a good skill to have in your marriage toolbox and one of the key ways to be patient in marriage. We can only do that through the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us… but we have to invite Him into that space. He won’t force His way in. We have to allow Him to shift us, mold us, convict us and prompt grace in us.

Will you invite the Holy Spirit to partner with you in standing for your marriage?

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A Prayer For Patience in Marriage

Precious Holy Spirit,

You tell us that love is patient, but patience is hard to show when life is hard. Between the normal stresses of life and the added uncertainty of the crisis this year, we need YOU to bring us YOUR peace that will help each of us better be patient.

Patience in marriage is even harder. To be patient with people outside our home often feels easier because we can fake anything for 5 minutes… but the kind of love that shows patience regularly has to be committed to not lose heart while enduring misfortunes and bearing offenses and injuries of others. We need you to give us the strength and power to do this better, Holy Spirit.

We will give YOU the glory for this,
Amen

Will You Show Patience in Marriage?

Showing patience in marriage will begin to change the atmosphere in your home for the better.  How do you learn to show patience with love toward your spouse?

Prayer

How is your prayer life?

Are you praying for your husband’s struggles?  Or are your prayers mostly frustration over his mistakes?

Grace

Are you looking at your husband the way God does?

Seeing his flaws through a lens of love and compassion will change everything.

How do you start to show patience in your marriage?

Pick a specific thing that has happened in the past week that you could apply Patience to and try again.

Do You Need To Go Deeper?

This is part of the 9-week Marriage Bible Study –Finding Hope & Joy in Marriage.  Through this course, we will explore the 9 Biblical foundations of having a successful marriage in God’s way.  

This class will include:

  • 10 video lessons
    • You can watch live or when you have time
  • 9 weeks of personal study
    • 5 days each week that should take 10-15 minutes
  • A private Facebook Group to discuss the homework and talk through the weekly challenges
  • 45 Days of Prayer prompts

in HIM,

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Tiffany Montgomery

Tiffany of Hope Joy in Christ inspires Christian Women to grow in faith, live out Biblical Marriage Principles and raise Godly Children.  Join the Wives Only Facebook Group here or keep up with her through Pinterest.

10 thoughts to “How to Show Patience in Marriage: 7 Ways Love Is Patient”

    1. Hi B. So glad the post encouraged you. Patience is a practiced thing. I would suggest you pick something that happened in this past week… some situation where you lost your cool and work through a way to do it better next time. I don’t know about you, but it seems like the same situations repeat! So chances are you’ll get another chance to try out that patience!

  1. Hiya, I am really glad I have found this info. Nowadays bloggers publish just about gossips and net and this is actually annoying. A good blog with interesting content, that is what I need. Thanks for keeping this web site, I’ll be visiting it. Do you do newsletters? Can not find it.

  2. Very Informative article, I especially enjoyed the part of Praying for our partner when we are angry and quick to Lash Out. I can use this tool with others as well.

  3. Hello. Yes I need encouragement, aadvice, I’m really not sure which… I just married this past summer, while my husband is in jail. He was raised christian, I wasn’t so much. I have been saved & baptized. My husband upsets me, he tells me I’m not a good christian wife.. I’m not sure what that is.. How do I figure out what I’m doing wrong if I have no clue why or what I’m doing wrong. Its really hard cuz he’s in jail, so he’s not here to guide me, I am trying to figure all this out.. I would love input & any & all suggestions.. Please?! Thank You! IDK how I stumbled across your post but I’m going to follow along if that’s ok?! Thank You! Bless You!

    1. I’m so glad you found the site Tiffiney! That is a hard situation. A good Christian Wife – in my opinion is one who wants to know what the Bible says about being a godly woman – then allows God to transform her from the inside out into that woman. Truly I don’t know that many of us are “Good Christian” anything’s. The bible says none of us are good, we all fall short. Paul even rambles on about not doing the good he knows he should do but continuing to do the mess he knows better than doing (Tiffany paraphrase of Romans 7:15-20) But I imagine being in a dark place – like he physically is- is very hard on him. Having said all that… I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was the worst wife there was in the beginning. I married Bud when he was lost – knowing that was a bad idea as I was saved. I acted just as bad as him and when I went back to Church he felt like there had been a bait and switch… just sayin’ it didn’t start well. The thing that truly changed me was Forgiveness and Prayer. I share part of that story here. And community is super helpful. If you are on FB I have a group for wives only – that might add some support to your weary soul. I will be praying for you in this journey!

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