SCRIPTURE: Because you have kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world, to try those who dwell on the earth. Revelation 5:10 ESV
THOUGHT: There’s endurance, then there’s patient endurance. The church of Philadelphia was commended for the latter and I make note of it.
I recently made this observation to a friend, “should you be asking for fruitfulness instead of endurance, because it seems you are very good at endurance already.”
I don’t want to discourage anyone from praying for endurance, but I do think if it’s our biggest ask, we may be more tempted to be impatient as we trudge along. Just enduring seems to edge a bit toward the victim end of the spectrum; patient enduring seems more like setting aside our notions of how we thought it would be, and carrying on in faith. If we’re asking for fruitfulness, our head is lifted up above the mundane to a larger cause. We’re asking our great God to do more with us and in us and through us than just help us get by. In pursuing something larger than ourselves, we gain a larger vision for God’s will and a need to rely more on him. We have to dwell with his stories more deeply, and dig down into a more robust faith that gets our feet out of bed and out of the house. We have to step out in faith when it makes us uncomfortable.
Whether my thoughts on this hold any water or not, I do see that as God watches the Christians in Philadelphia, he sees a church that he wants to rescue from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world. It’s as if they have born up under their trials and trusted him in a way that makes him say their work here is done. I’d like to be like that.
PRAYER: Oh God, I want to be like believers in the church of Philadelphia, not just enduring with a grim face and clinched teeth, but patiently enduring trials here and now with a big, robust faith, eager to see how you’ll solve the next dilemma and what you’ll do to complete the work started in me, and in this great, big world you created.
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Blogger Amy Clemens is the author of Walking When You’d Rather Fly: Meditations on Faith After the Fall. In it she explores childhood sexual abuse and how it impacted her faith (or lack thereof) for four decades. You’ll find not only her story, but better yet, the Big Story of God.
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