Endurance

The Christian life is not easy. Often I think, OK, God, I gave my heart to Jesus so make my life easy and wonderful and all rainbows and light with no storms or trials or hardships along the way. However, Paul compares the walk with Christ as a race to be run with endurance.

The writer of Hebrews says I have need of endurance so that I can get what is promised to me after I do the will of God.

In 2 Corinthians 6:3-7, Paul lists the things he has had to endure which is NOTHING like anything I have ever had to endure. In fact I have never had to endure much for the sake of Christ. Why does Paul continually endure these things? Romans 5:3-5 gives me the results of endurance.

Jesus told the church in Philadelphia in Revelation 3:10-11 that patient endurance will spare them from the trial coming on the whole world.

Maybe I don't have to endure persecution or hunger or so many of the things the early church faced and many in the world face even today. But in a lot of ways I think enduring can be just as difficult in our society that bombards us with sexual immorality on TV, movies and books; greed and covetousness that forms from the advertising for cars, furniture, game systems and so much more that surrounds us everywhere; food advertising that makes us hungry so we go to fridge and eat when we should not; the allure of a "good time" found in the advertising for beer. (I've always thought the best commercials at the Super Bowl are the beer commercials.) The church in America has divorce rates as high as those outside the church.

Fighting against all these things requires a lot of endurance, a lot of focus on the things of God, as well as a lot of repentance when my endurance lags and I succumb to the sins that so easily ensnares me.