Endurance is not fun! It hurts, it stretches, it pushes! Endurance even pulls at us and sometimes against that push and pull we can feel like taffy! The problem for me is…the taffy seems to go through the grueling process of push and pull, and comes out from under it to become a delicious candy that is not too hard and not too soft. It seems to have arrived at the perfect place of candy perfection!

Why then, when I am pushed and pulled, stretched and challenged, tested and tried, do I come out feeling like I am still on the taffy pull? Am I not complete, am I not finished, have I not yet arrived? 

As much as I would love for this to be a feel good blog post, it’s just not. The Truth is when we speak the truth in love, we must be willing to face both the easy stuff and the hard stuff.

I am at professed optimist who always sees the cup as half full! But even this eternal optimist must face the whole truth of the Word of God and not just the parts that she likes!

If God has truly given me a voice for Him, and I am called to speak His Truth in love, then I must speak the whole truth and trust that because it is from God, it is all in love! God‘s love is not like our love. God knows all things. God knows the beginning from the end. God knows that the tough stuff along with the easy stuff, will make us who He intends us to be! 

The truth is we live in a fallen world where sin has entered and in too many places has taken root! The trials that we face are part of the fact that we live in this world. We will have troubles, and we will make mistakes, we will experience disappointments even from God‘s people. We will also cause disappointment and hurt to God’s people. We will experience loss and we will grow weary, as hard as we try not to! We will also hit spiritual walls and face times that we want to quit. But the question we must face when we come to those times is the one I posed in the beginning…

“Dear Jesus, Why must we endure?”

Jesus answers us back, “endurance is what you need to keep living by faith!”

“Consider it great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces ENDURANCE!”  

James 1:2-3

ENDURANCE means that we are still in it! No matter how low we have sunk, no matter how hard that wall is that we’ve hit, no matter how great the pain of our circumstances is, when we are trusting Jesus and living by faith, Jesus is producing endurance in us! And to endure means that we are getting through it!

TRUTH BOMB

THE ONLY WAY THROUGH THE “TAFFY PULL” OF LIFE IS TO ENDURE!

That is why we can say along with James, that we can consider it joy when we experience trials because we know that it is producing the way through our trials, ENDURANCE!

It is hard to endure. But endurance is a way of getting through something, a certain strength that can only be built when we stay with something and do not quit! 

This is only possible through the power and strength of our Lord Jesus Christ! He alone holds all power and when He is living in us we access His power to endure!

Will you choose to access His power with me and endure? Believe me, I don’t want to sometimes! However, I do know that I want to live a life marked by faith and the only way that I can do that is to let my faith be tested to produce endurance, His endurance, not mine!

Speak Truth Love