ENDURANCE

I don’t usually post on Tuesday, but I felt led to share an article I wrote for Charis Woman Magazine last November. I have several friends who are going through some trying times right now and I know it seems like it will never end. Enduring these times can really challenge your faith. I have found Christ to be true to His promise, “I can do (endure) all thing through Christ who strengthens me. Phil. 4:13 I pray this encourages you as you endure.

Hebrew 10:36 “For you need endurance in order to do God’s will and so receive what is promised.“

To understand what it means to endure, we must begin at the beginning. When God created the world, he said it was good. Adam and Eve had a perfect life in the garden of Eden. Their existence was governed by joy and fellowship with God. They were to enjoy living and working in the garden. But the loving God wanted them to love him and walk with him willingly, so He gave them free will and the ability to choose to love and obey Him. The word endurance did not exist in that garden They were simply to enjoy and walk in fellowship with their loving creator, which they did until they were presented with a choice. They chose to disobey the only restriction that God gave for their own good and protection. Without this restriction, to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, there would have been no choice. Thus, the idea of endurance was born the minute they decided to disobey God’s command. They would now have to endure pain and suffering such as they could never have imagined, as they were cast out of their perfect world. Welcome to the world that we now know and must endure because of their choice.

To begin my journey of endurance, let’s check the definitions of the word “endure” :

1.To suffer (something painful or difficult) patiently.

2.to remain in existence; last throughout time (eternity).

First, we will look at the “tails” side of the endurance coin-to suffer patiently. I have had to endure my share of suffering in my seventy-seven years of life. To begin with, I could and would have been aborted had my mother’s boyfriend, who was not my biological father, not offered to marry her, sign the birth certificate, and raise me as his own. This fact was revealed to me at my father’s death when I was twenty-eight years old.  Suddenly my insecurities, fear of rejection, need to please, and desire to be perfect, that I had battled all my life made sense! It explained why my father and I were never close and why my mother lived with such guilt all her life. It explained why as a college freshman, when I decided, as a believer, that I would totally commit and surrender to Christ and whatever he had for my future, I thought of Job and cried out to God that,” tho He slay me,” I would still love and serve Him anyway! I knew how much I loved God, but I only understood a love of obligation and guilt and figured I was not worthy of unconditional love, so I would just endure whatever God was willing to give me.

I graduated college with a teaching degree, something I had never even dreamed of, went back home to Ohio, and began my career. I prayed to always obey and serve God and worked tirelessly in my home church, where I met the preacher boy God had waiting for me. We were off to Tennessee for more education, training, and ministry.

We endured a childless marriage for seven years and then adopted our Amy at six weeks of age. Eighteen months later, to our surprise and lots of hard labor, we welcomed our daughter, Jennifer. Those years of teaching, raising two daughters, and being highly involved in ministry with its ups and downs, ins and outs, were blessed and easy to endure.

I made great progress in my understanding of God’s love for me through the years, until October 10, 1989. That day our older daughter, Amy, was hit by a car in front of our parsonage and killed! The enemy came in full force telling me that I wasn’t a good enough mother, that I had done something to displease God.  The idea of being rejected by God hovered over me.  As I lay prostrate before Jesus, crying out my questions and telling Him I had done my best, He gently held me in His arms and allowed His tears to mingle with mine. He assured me that He was grieving with me and had also surrendered a child to death. He said the accident was not a part of the perfect world He had planned, but because we live in a sinful world, bad things could and would happen. He assured me He was holding Amy and I would see her again! I endured several years of grief, and counseling and held on to the truth of God’s undying love for me, standing against the lies of the enemy.

Ten years later during our younger daughter’s senior year in high school, she developed an unhealthy relationship with a boyfriend. She was a believer and had been blessed with a good mind and many gifts to use in God’s kingdom, but the enemy was at work to distract and derail her. This time I was called to endure a year of sleepless nights crying out to the Lord for her protection and for her to see truth and answer God’s call on her life. That’s when, thankfully, she chose to attend Grace College, break off the relationship and allow God to bring a wonderful man of God into her life. Endurance in prayer paid off richly as she is blessed with a godly husband, three beautiful children who love the Lord, and all are serving Him as they plant a church for His glory.

Fast forward to 11-11-11, a date that would be easy for me to remember in years to come. I had retired from teaching and was working at the information desk at the local hospital. I noticed my left side becoming numb as my shift continued. At the end of my shift, instead of going to the ER, I decided to go to a Walk-in Clinic where I waited three hours to be seen and sent back to the hospital for an CT scan of my brain. They found nothing abnormal. Two weeks later as the numbness grew worse, I had an MRI, and they found a blood clot that had caused a stroke on my left side. The result would be the slow death of the nerve endings on the entire left side of my body.  I didn’t lose my speech or ability to walk or move my left side. It was like someone had divided my body in half and put a tight blood pressure cuff on the left side while having a completely normal right side. This was not a time of doubting God’s love, that issue was settled. This was a time of natural anxiety and wondering what God’s plan was in all of this. As a type A personality and a fixer, this was not something I was looking forward to. My life was about to change with something I would have to endure and would only get worse until eath parted us. Now there’s a happy thought!

Talk about endurance, this one continues to be a huge trial of trust and belief in a loving God who promised not to give me more than I could handle. The complicating fact was and is that no one can see any physical effects of this stroke and they expect the same energy level and workload I have always carried. I have had the embarrassment of having to tell folks that I cannot keep up with them and do what I have always enjoyed doing. This act of endurance is going to last the rest of my life, not just for a season, and pride threatens to rear its ugly head.  I don’t like slow; I tend to be impatient. If you know me, you can stop laughing! I don’t like the idea having sit down half-way through the mall because of pain. I don’t like not being able to hold babies for fear of dropping them.

There are many things that are now challenging that others will never suspect or notice. That’s where pride enters in, as I don’t want to admit my limits or pain. But as this season of endurance continues, I choose to keep on singing and giving thanks for the goodness of God and His love for me! In the last twelve years, I have learned so much about God’s love, His faithfulness, His sovereignty, His compassion, and strength in my weakness.  I am determined to say with Paul, ⁷ I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. ⁸ Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. 2 Timothy 4:7-8 (NIV) In other words, I have endured!!

No, I did not forget the other side of the coin. The flip side of the definition to endure, is to remain in existence; last throughout time (eternity). Scripture repeats forty-four times that “His love endures forever.” Ecclesiastes 3:14 declares that, “ whatever God does will endure forever.”

I am excited as I sit here telling my story of endurance to know that God’s love for me endures forever! I certainly have not arrived, I am still learning and enduring. Each time the Lord tests me or corrects me, I know He loves me. With each correction I learn more about His purpose for my life and how to live out that purpose in His love. I want to close this story of endurance with my version of my life scripture, Psalm 139. These words keep me going when I am tempted to believe the lies of the enemy, rejection and unworthiness. Of course, I am unworthy and so are you. Our worthiness in found in blood and love of Jesus Christ and HE LOVES ME and HE LOVES YOU!

Psalm 139 (Joyce version)

O Lord, you search me and know me. You know when I sit or stand. You know it all. You know where I go and when I lie down. You are acquainted with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, You know it already! You go before me and behind me and keep your hand on me. You are absolutely beyond my comprehension. Where can I go from Your Spirit or hide from Your presence? If I go to heaven, You are there. If I go to the grave, You are there. If I rise with the dawn in the East, or settle in the sea in the West, there Your hand holds me. Surely the darkness will hide me, but darkness and light are the same to You. I know you formed all my innermost parts. You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made! My frame was not hidden from you when I was formed (in the back seat of a car.) Your eyes saw my unformed body, (and saved me from abortion). All the days of my life were written in Your book before one of them came to be. Your thoughts toward me are precious and vast in number. If I tried to count them, they would outnumber the sands of the seas. So, Jesus, search my heart and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any unrighteous way in me. And please forgive me and lead me into everlasting love and life with You!

May God bless you as you continue to endure for His sake and the gospel. May He strengthen you and give you peace and joy for the journey even in the most difficult times. May you feel Him crying with you, hurting with you, and laughing with you. May you feel His everlasting, enduring love enveloping you completely as you move forward in confidence and faith in Him.   Shalom!

If you’d like to read the other uplifting articles and stories from the Endurance issue of Charis Woman magazine, you can order here: http://www.chariswomen.com/shop