Endurance and the Waves

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering…

─Galatians 5:22a (NKJV)

Have you ever had waves of trials slamming into you seemingly simultaneously? Sometimes it’s like waves are hitting me from all four sides and from the top and bottom all at the same time. I cry out to the Lord for relief but they don’t cease, they just keep slamming into the shores of my soul.

This is counterintuitive to me. Let me explain in a formula:

The more trials + the longer they last = heightened weakening, enhancing the potential for failure. Bad.

The solution, humanly speaking at least, would be:

Reducing the number of trials + shortening their length of time = greater strength, enhancing the potential for lengthened success. Good.

But have you noticed; God doesn’t behave the way WE would. He doesn’t comply with our limited-view expectations. We see time in hours, days, weeks, etc. He sees time immemorial. Therefore, God’s equation would seem to be something like this:

Be strong in the Lord through trials (Ephesians 6:10ff, 1 Peter 1:3-12) + obedience (1 John 5:1-3) = deliverance (eventually, Deuteronomy 8:1-10).  Faith.

Without God, our ability to endure multiple trials is seriously compromised if not completely paralyzed. The world just does not have solutions that sink into the soul without first corrupting the soul. However, God provides the antidote to this worldly pollution; the indwelling Holy Spirit. That is why the Galatians verse above is so important to grasp.  Fruit is something that grows outwardly based upon what is already inside. An apple tree produces apples, not oranges. Why? Well, because it has apple characteristics (genes) all the way to its core (pardon the pun). So if we are saturated to our core in the Holy Spirit, then we’ll produce Spirit-sparked fruit. One of these fruit is longsuffering.

Longsuffering is from a Greek word that is also translated as ‘patience’ or, more aptly to my point of view, ‘endurance’.  Endurance, according to the Encarta Dictionary, means “the ability or power to bear prolonged exertion, pain or hardship.” That sounds an awful lot like longsuffering to me. 

Thus, back to my equation example. If trials were simple and/or short in duration, then our ability to endure through them would be just that—our own ability. But as trials mount to the point of fainting, God, by way of the indwelling Holy Spirit infuses us with the ability to persevere, to endure. And if we’re not careful, we may even have joy through the endurance because joy is another Spirit-sparked fruit. 

When the trials finally cease, whether in days, weeks or even years, there will be no doubt that it was God that brought us through the trials. Hmm, reminds me of a couple of other Scriptures:

And He said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”

─2 Corinthians 12:9

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trails, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.

─James 1:2-3

And, finally, as we endure through the trials, we need to realize that we’re not alone:

“I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

─Jesus, Matthew 28:20

So hang in there, a better day is coming.