Grief and sorrow deliver a mean punch. Suffering can knock you off your feet. Burdens can buckle your knees. Sin and temptation can blindside you. Trials can hit viciously and unexpectedly. This happens to all people. The rich and poor. Young and old. Famous and obscure. Christian and unbeliever. Educated and illiterate. Nobody is immune from the pains of this life. No amount of money can insulate a person from the hard punches of life.
So what do you do? You keep getting back up when life knocks you down. You keep pushing forward one step, one prayer, one Bible reading, one choice not to give up at a time. If you have been pummeled by life long enough it seems easier to give up and stay down after awhile. When a person has prayed their heart out, and come to the place where they do not know what else to pray to get God's help, but the help does not come it is easy to lose heart. It easy to succumb to fear when everything in your life screams inside your mind that the situation is hopeless. It is easy to dwell on that message and quit trying to rise above your circumstances.
Like the bucket full of crabs when one tries to rise above the others and tries toclimb out the rest pull the one back down. When a person resolves to press on, overcome, persevere, endure, triumph something else blindsides knocking you back down. In that moment you have a choice. Will you stay down? Will you sulk in your sorrows? I have seen many whom have.
There are people who gave up on life a long time ago. They may still be alive but they are not truly living. They are just existing. Just going through the motions of living. Shuffling through their days void of passion and purpose. Such people become negative, bitter, sullen, depressed and blinded to hope for better days. I have seen it in others. There have been times when I recognized this in my own life.
Perseverance is an attractive quality. I am thinking of a man I know. I used to live near him. For four decades he arose early long before the sun rose to drive into the big city to go to work. For over four decades he kept persevering. I heard him each morning drive past my house. Day after day through the sweltering heat of the summers and bone chilling cold of the winters he kept showing up and doing his job. He lived modestly. He drove a very old truck. He lived for years in a very small house with his wife and kids. Along the way there were setbacks. There was pain in the journey. Through it all this man kept awaking in the wee hours of the morning, getting dressed , driving close to an hour to work and putting in a full day of hard labor. He repeated this routine for decades.
That is a clear picture of what God's children are supposed to do in life. Keep getting up. Keep laboring. Keep being faithful. Keep showing up. This is not the path of least resistance. There is much resistance along the way.
Persevering is not just a challenge to you in your day. Past, present, and future believes in Jesus have, do. and will face this same challenge.
Revelation 3:10 (NKJV) 10 Because you have kept My command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which shall come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.
Did you catch that. "You have kept my command to persevere."
persevere | ˌpərsəˈvir |
verb [no object]
continue in a course of action even in the face of difficulty or with little or no prospect of success: his family persevered with his treatment.
You continue in a course of action. You keep praying, trusting, hoping and moving forward. You keep getting back up off the canvas. You keep refusing to quit. You keep praising. You keep serving. You keep loving. You keep living!
There will come a day when your perseverance is rewarded. A day when the tears of defeat turn into tears of triumph. Let me illustrate. After college I enrolled in seminary and hated it. My undergraduate degree was in Bible. In seminary I felt like I was studying the same things and was not motivated to do my best and finish. Eventually ministry opportunities led me away from close proximity to school and I never finished.
It bugged me. In 2002 I got the bright idea I would enroll in a seminary where I could complete my course work through the mail. They called it distance learning. I liked it because I progressed through the course work at my own pace. Only along the way I grew undisciplined and did not complete my course work. I had full time ministry responsibilities, a wife, and four sons. I justified that I did not need to finish. Yet it bothered me that I started something and did not finish.
Fast forward eight years. One day I felt convicted I needed to finish my graduate course work. I prayed about it but at the time we did not have the money. I asked God for the money if He really wanted me to finish. He provided. I reenrolled.
The course work was not easy. There were multiple books to read and write book reports over. There were more papers to write than I care to remember. Then there were the tests. Comprehensive final exams. I remember one time looking at all the course work I needed to complete to earn my degree and felt like it was a mountain I would never surmount.
One particular dSaturday I worked all day on a research paper. I researched, made notes, collected my thoughts and started pounding away on my computer. I still remember the relief and joy that came when I finally finished the paper and the bibliography. A sense of triumph. I exited the program to get something to eat. When I returned later I could not believe what I found. I FORGOT TO SAVE THE PAPER. I lost heart in that moment and wanted to quit my studies all together. I beat myself up for several minutes. Then something changed. I determined not to quit. I resolved to rewrite the paper one sentence at a time. In the end I wrote a better paper the second time.
It took two years of early mornings and late nights. It took a lot of time and effort. God strengthened me and helped each step of the way. I finally finished what I sat out to accomplish.
That is life. You persevere. You refuse to stay down. You get back up. You resolve not to quit.
Romans 5:3-5 (NKJV)
3 And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance;
4 and perseverance, character; and character, hope.
5 Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.
Tribulation produces perseverance just like running produces endurance or strength training produces muscle. We learn that trials can be our friends to help us grow in perseverance. God uses trials and perseverance to shape our character. Out of all that comes hope. Hope is the expectation that God will show up in our circumstances and prove Himself faithful. So with all that, let's persevere to the finish.
No comments:
Post a Comment