Sunday, May 3, 2020

Endurance For Times Like These


Five years ago God spoke to my heart that my word for the year was to be endurance. I wanted God to give me a "happier" word for the year. Endurance seemed like such a hard word and I dreaded embracing it. I was just plain afraid to. I thought of it as meaning, "just grit your teeth, hold on and don't let go" until you get through this coming year. I almost rejected the word God was clearly speaking to me due to foreboding and fear. It turned out that the word endurance was one of the richest, most meaningful words I've ever focused on. When I looked up all of the scriptures with the word endurance in them, and related words like perseverance and steadfastness, I was amazed at all of the God given benefits and promises for those who have endurance.

We are in the midst of a pandemic that has rocked the whole world. Our lives have been turned topsy turvy by an invisible virus and the sickness, death and economic upheaval that it has caused. I thought now would be a good time to revisit some of the scriptures about endurance that impacted me all those years ago and that I am leaning on during this time.

Hebrews 10:35-36 AMPC "Do not, therefore, fling away your fearless confidence, for it carries a great and glorious compensation of reward. For you have need of steadfast patience and endurance, so that you may perform and fully accomplish the will of God, and thus receive and carry away, and enjoy to the full, what is promised." 

Romans 5:3-4 tells us that we can be full of joy even in times of hardship, because pressure and affliction produce endurance and endurance develops mature character, approved faith, and tried integrity.  It goes on to say that mature character produces joyful and confident hope.  Do you see the full circle there?  Joy->Endurance->Mature Character->Joyful and confident Hope.  Endurance wasn't just some random word God gave me five years ago. Endurance was the next step to complete the joy/hope cycle in my life. (Joy had been my word for the previous year and hope was my word for the year the first time I had ever chosen a word for the year!)

Romans 8:25 instructs us to hope for what is still unseen with patience and perseverance, (endurance).    

Romans 12:12, Again, as in Romans 5:3-4, this verse says that joyhope and steadfast endurance are all connected.  

Romans 15:4-5 encourages us that "...by our steadfast and patient endurance and the encouragement drawn from the Scriptures we might hold fast to and cherish hopeNow may the God Who gives the power of patient endurance, steadfastness, and Who supplies encouragement, grant you to live in such mutual harmony and such full sympathy with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus."  The scriptures in Romans 15 encourage us because we can see that endurance isn't something God is expecting us to work up, but something He promises to give us the power and ability to do. I love that He promises to accompany that with encouragement. Lastly, He connects endurance to living in mutual harmony with each other and in accord with Jesus. Speaking for myself, if there's anything I desire, it's for our home and our church to be places where we live in harmony with each other, and above all, with Jesus. If endurance is a key to this end result, then how can we say no?

In 1 Corinthians 13:7 God reminds us that endurance is a characteristic of love

Colossians 1:11 promises us that God invigorates and strengthens us to exercise endurance

Hebrews 6:10-12 encourages us that God does not overlook our labor in ministry, that He wants us to realize and enjoy the full assurance and development of our hope until the end, and that through patient endurance we will inherit the promises He has for us.  

Hebrews 12:1 admonishes us to run our race with patient endurance.  

James 1:3-4 promises us that the proving of our faith will bring out endurance and that if we let endurance have full play and do a thorough work in us we will be perfectly and fully developed, lacking nothing.  

James 5:11 says that those who endure are blessed/happy and that, in the end, God's purpose is to bless us because He is full of pity and compassion and tenderness and mercy.

Luke 21:19 AMPC "By your steadfastness and patient endurance you shall win the true life of your souls", (the soul is your mind, will and emotions). This verse, to me, is God's way of saying, "Don't quit now.  With My help, keep on patiently enduring.  Do my will and you will enjoy to the full what I have promised you."  

God wants to help us, to supply us with the endurance that God promises to give us for times like these.


3 comments:

  1. Thank you for this reminder to patiently endure, for God will be faithful to help us and bring us through. I am most grateful for His promises!

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  2. I am so grateful that nothing that we are facing has caught God surprised or unaware and that there is always something in His Word to equip us for it.

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  3. Thank you for showing how that does tie together. It would have made me think of drudgery, but so true endurance strengthens. Like when I walk at times, I hate starting out with dread and then once I've accustomed, the strength is there to keep going, and the feeling is great. :) Great comforting post.

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