For the rest of June, we will teach from the lives of those who proved their character through perseverance. Perseverance is: “persistence in doing something despite difficulty or delay in achieving success.” It is an essential trait for Christ-followers. In our day of instant conveniences, we are still required to persevere through hardship of being faithful to the Word and will of God, and enduring opposition from a world that is counterculture to the Kingdom of Christ.
“The secret to success is not giving up.” I truly believe this in nearly every endeavor we take on. Countless times I’ve been working on a task only to have it fail, and I am often tempted to just give up. But I’ve found that if I keep on trying, in most cases I, or someone I ask, can figure it out. If this is true for fixing a computer problem, or getting a car to work, or locating something we’ve misplaced, perhaps it is true for the bigger issues of life. We need perseverance to learn to live Christ-like.
Galatians 5:22-23: “But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” I don’t think it is an accident that the traits God wants to cultivate in us are called “fruit.” The thing about fruit is that it takes time to grow. I grew up on a small farm with a good sized orchard. We had many kinds of apple trees as well as pear, crabapple, and cherry trees. They all took a lot of work to maintain. I particularly remember when my father planted a Northern Spy apple tree. They were not a common tree, but the apples had a unique taste and characteristics that my father desired. After we worked hard to dig a hole and plant the young sapling, covering the base with mulch and watering it sufficiently, my father told me something that took me by surprise. “It’ll be over ten years before we will see an apple on this tree,” he said. Wow - I was thinking we’d enjoy the fruit of our labor that fall. I was about 10 when we planted the tree, and I remember when I was in my early twenties enjoying eating one of the apples from the eventual harvest.
How often do we tend the issues in our lives for decades before being able to enjoy the fruits of our labor? How long are you willing to persevere to make a relationship great, and not give up prematurely and “move on”? How long are you willing to discipline yourself to abstain from behavior that God calls destruction (sin)? And for how long do you develop habits that reflect Christ’s character (virtues)? In this day of instant gratification, let’s take the time to grow as Christian by learning how to stand firm and persevere!