Patience
Spurgeon on James 5:7-8
And patience saves a man from a great deal of haste and folly. A hasty man never is a wise man. He is wise that halts a little, and ponders his ways, especially when adversity crosses his path. I have known brothers in the ministry get discouraged, and leave their pulpits, and repent as long as ever they lived that they left a sphere of labor, where they ought to have toiled on. I have known Christians get discouraged, and touchy, and angry, fall out with the church of which they were members, go out in the wilderness, and leave the fat pastures behind them. They have only had to regret all their lives that they had not a little more patience with their brethren, and with the circumstances which surrounded them.
Whenever you are about to do anything in a great hurry, pause and pray. The hot fever in your own system ill fits you to act discreetly. While you tarry for a more healthy temperature of your own feelings, there may be a great change in the thermometer outside as to the circumstances that influence you. Great haste makes little speed. He who believes shall not make haste. And as the promise runs, he shall never be confounded.
Above all, patience is to be commended to you because it glorifies God. The man who can wait, and wait calmly, astonishes the worldling, for the worldling wants it now. You remember John Bunyan’s pretty parable (as you all know it, I will only give the outline)—of Passion and Patience? Passion would have all his best things first, and one came in, and lavished before him out of a bag all that the child could desire. Patience would have his best things last, and Patience sat and waited, so when Passion had used up all his joy, and all he sought for, Patience came in for his portion, and as John Bunyan very well remarked, there is nothing to come after the last, and so the portion of Patience lasted forever.