In high-school, I joined the track team. I learned quickly that I was not a distance runner. I had neither the patience nor endurance for the feat. I guess I just wanted to get where I was going, quickly. This is how many of us approach life. We set a goal, and if we don’t reach it quickly, we lose focus or interest. For example, it is estimated that it takes approximately 2,000 steps to run a mile. With each step, you are farther from your starting point and closer to the end goal. But if you stop at stride 1,997, what good has come of your labor?
In life, the completion of your assignment will require endurance. Endurance is defined as the ability to bear prolonged hardship. This doesn’t mean that you have to look forward to a life of drudgery and despair. It does mean that when those days present themselves, you have to demonstrate your fortitude. Your purpose, your vision, or your ideas are too important to allow them to fall victim to the circumstances and conditions of life. John F. Kennedy said, “A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on. Ideas have endurance without death.” An idea, not a bomb, not a weapon, not a dictator, is the most powerful thing in the world. In fact, those things are only as powerful as the ideas that created them or govern them. The political rhetoric of our day is proof that even foolish ideas can inspire men and spawn far-reaching actions.
Thoughts and ideas spawn beliefs and beliefs govern actions. When life starts throwing you a variety of obstacles, your endurance will be based on your ability to recall the original idea that served as the catalyst for your journey. What is your why? The prophet Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 3:21, “This I recall to my mind, Therefore I have hope.” The prefix “re” means to go back. Therefore, in order to re-call, you have to go back to the original thought. What is the original thought God gave you? I’ve said before that you should be the solution today to the problem you realized yesterday. However, your ‘yesterday’ may have been a year ago, 5 years ago, or 2 months ago. No matter when your ‘yesterday’ was, whether or not you’re on track, the problem has not ceased being a problem. If God gave you a way to help starving children have access to food, I have news for you. That task has not been completed. If you have a burden on your heart to make sure that all children have access to quality education, then your vision is still needed. If you’ve been troubled by the degradation of our cities, restoration is still needed. The work still needs to be done. If you and I don’t endure, we collectively lose. Humanity loses.
I know it’s not easy. Nothing worth doing is easy. Endurance means that you have to remember that although you haven’t arrived at the goal, every step forward takes you farther from where you started. In this case, looking back can be motivating. Phil. 1:6 says, “being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” The completion of a task is always preceded by a process. Certain tasks are simple and the process is therefore clear and painless. Other tasks, I would argue the more meaningful ones, are complex and are only accomplished by enduring a long and often arduous process. Have you bought in to the process – a process, which requires endurance? The process is necessary in order to make progress.
When trying to examine your progress I need you to ask yourself these 3 questions:
- Have you abandoned any steps that are necessary to complete the task?
- Are you making full use of all of the qualities, abilities and capabilities that God has placed in you?
- What evidence can you produce that shows progress?
An American clergyman, Edwin Hubbel Chapin said, “Not in achievement, but in endurance, of the human soul, does it show its divine grandeur and its alliance with the infinite.”