Have you ever done endurance work? Has that work improved your overall endurance? Have you spent time building your character? Were there specific pieces of your character you were working on? What were the steps you were taking to build your character?
Endurance is not easy to build. Physical endurance requires us spending time and energy to build, which we may interpret as suffering. Someone who trains to run a marathon will train for weeks or months leading up to the race and run hundreds of miles.
We can also train ourselves to endure mentally. This type of endurance does not necessarily require physical pain but requires us to give up our personal preferences. Enduring grief, anguish, stress, and mental strain is suffering in a different way. As we give up our preferences and take on God’s desires, we grow in our endurance.
The same suffering and giving up of ourselves builds our character. Our character becomes more like God’s. We learn to see the world as God sees it. We learn to see people as God sees them. Our character changes from selfishness to selflessness. We grow in compassion. We desire to serve rather than be served.
As our character becomes more like God’s, our hope increases. We better understand what it means to hope in Jesus Christ. Our faith is strengthened, we are assured and convicted that our hope in God will be fulfilled. With this character, we can boldly step out in faith, trusting God is always with us and he will guide us through whatever situation we face.
I pray we all build our endurance through the sufferings we face. I pray we submit to God’s desires to build our character. I pray each one of us have our hope assured as we mature. Accept the suffering. Build your endurance. Build your character. Exchange your preferences for God’s desires. Increase your hope. Strengthen your faith.
Romans 5:3-5 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
Marty Pressey 