Need of Endurance

“The best way to overcome is to keep going.”
Loren Thornburg

We all face obstacles.  Some of us seem to have more than others.  No one likes trials or asks for them, but we all have them.  The question then is what will we choose to do with them.  For a culture that doesn’t like to endure trials we sure do love a good story of someone who overcomes them.  We celebrate the stories and make movies of the lives where people have overcome great odds.  We all love a good story like that as long as it’s not ours.  Although we have probably experienced the joy of overcoming it is still so tempting to quit when it gets hard.  Yet, I wonder if that trial that seems so hard now is actually helping to make things easier in the future.  So then when we give up because we want things to be easier we are actually making things harder.  The immediate rewards become temporary.  There are joys ahead if you will only keep going.

“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.”
Hebrews 10:36 Amplified 

Endurance means that we are not swerved from our purpose and loyalty to the faith by trials and suffering.  I wish it didn’t say by trials and suffering in there because then I think I could say that I am able to endure.  However, when trials and suffering comes I realize how easily swerved I am.  The pain and unknown of how much longer I will have to endure leaves me wanting out.  Yet, when I choose to opt out I also opt out of all that God wants to do in and through me.  I miss out on seeing what He will do if I will wait on Him.  The temptation is great but the reward is greater.  As tempting as it is to leave the place of trial we can’t forget the reward we are leaving as well.  If we can only remain under what God has allowed for us to endure we will also receive His promises to the full.  God doesn’t call us to endure just so that we have to go through pain, but there is always something on the other side.  God is always doing something in the midst of our trial.  We just have to stick it out long enough to see what He is up to.