Holiness Is Patient Work
Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure; wash me, and I shall be clean indeed.
— Psalm 51:7
I remember the intensity of my younger faith.
There was a season when I prayed almost desperately that God would make me pure. I wanted to be holy, righteous, and faithful. I wanted to become the kind of disciple whose faith could move mountains. The idea of being cleansed by God filled me with hope, and I imagined that, with enough prayer and enough determination, I might someday arrive there.
Looking back now, I smile a little at my younger self.
I wasn't wrong to desire holiness. That desire was a good gift. What I misunderstood was the way God usually answers that prayer.
He answers it through life.
He answers it through disappointments, failures, forgiveness, relationships, grief, ordinary work, unexpected joys, and countless opportunities to begin again. The purification I imagined as a dramatic spiritual event has turned out to be a lifelong conversation between God and the human heart.
When I was young, I measured holiness mostly by outward behavior. I avoided certain sins. I tried to make honorable decisions. I gave faithfully. I watched my language. I sincerely wanted to do what was right.
Those things mattered.
But I have also learned that it is possible to do many outwardly good things while still making the spiritual life revolve around oneself. Pride can wear remarkably respectable clothing.
Over the years, God seems less interested in polishing my résumé than in reshaping my heart. He has been teaching me humility, compassion, patience, forgiveness, and mercy—lessons that cannot simply be memorized. They have to be lived.
Perhaps that is why purification takes so long.
Children do not always enjoy taking baths, and most of us resist the deeper cleansing that God is trying to accomplish within us. We would rather become holy quickly than slowly. We would rather skip the difficult chapters and arrive immediately at wisdom.
Life does not seem to work that way.
George Harrison once sang, "But it takes so long."
Indeed it does.
And perhaps that is not a flaw in God's plan but part of His kindness. He is not merely cleaning us up. He is patiently making us into the people He always intended us to become.
So today, if I were asked about the first step toward purity, I might answer differently than I would have ten years ago.
The first step is still desire.
But perhaps the second is patience—patience with ourselves, patience with others, and patience with the quiet, steady work of God, who has never seemed to be in nearly as much of a hurry as we are.
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