My friend was telling me that it was because the roots were settled deep that’s why they could endure.
It was great to hear that. It was necessary to be reminded of that. Storms come to everyone, struggles are a part of life. The ability to endure is not so much about what you can do by mental effort and will-power. It’s about the depth of relationship you have in the one who is the source of strength to endure.
He did not promise a life free of trouble. He did it even promise a life free from pain and death. What He did promise was His presence and protection to the end. And if we endure to the end – remaining faithful to Him through the oncoming storms – remain standing with Him and in Him then there is nothing anyone or anything can do to prevent Him awarding a crown of life.
It is not always the answer people want to hear in the here and now. In the struggle, in the pain and in the trials there is a desire to hear words of immediate deliverance and rescue and victory here and now. It’s what we want to hear. It’s what we choose to believe. It’s what we invest energy in. There are episodes that renew that hope and desire and there’s nothing wrong, necessarily with choosing to believe that. As long as there is also the hope of something greater ahead.
There are stories of bravery as people pledge their final moments alive entrusting themselves once more to a God who remains faithful even in their death. Those stories remind us that death is not the end. Death is not the defeat we think it is. It is the connection we have in Him that allows us to endure to the end.
I am grateful for my friend. What he said exposed my cowardice. It exposed the part of me that didn’t want to suffer and didn’t want to have to go through pain for the cause of Christ. It showed me again why I just want to trust God to avoid as much of that as possible. That moment of clarity, however, was a mercy. To recognise it and to take a moment by moment choice as to who will I trust – the faulty and sometimes faithless desires of my ego, or the faithful, trustworthy character of God?
Am I truly built deeply to endure?
(Photo by Cristian Palmer on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 