I am sure many of you are trying to figure out what our team name means. So let me lift a burden off of you and explain a little bit of what hupomone means and why it is our team name.
Hupomone is a greek word that is pronounced
(hoop-om-on-ay’) and it means
cheerful (or hopeful) endurance, constancy, enduring, patience, patient continuance (waiting).
A couple of scriptures that we get this word from are these:
Heb 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us
run with
hupomone (cheerful endurance) the
race that is set before us,
2Co 6:4 but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great
hupomone (cheerful endurance), in afflictions, hardships, calamities,
2Co 6:5 beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;
2Co 6:6 by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love;
Endurance is a hard thing to grasp, simply because there are many different facets to enduring. One can grudgingly endure and continue on out of a sense of obligation. One could endure simply out of selfish gain to think of themselves as accomplished.
But I think that is why this word
Hupomone is so important. We are not simply called to endure, but instead we are to endure with cheerfulness, and what a difference that makes. When we are persecuted and hungry and imprisoned or afflicted, it is not enough to simply endure out of obligation, but instead we need to look beyond our afflictions and focus on what is greater and endure cheerfully, because nothing can take us away from Jesus.
I for the past year have had to endure one of the most painful things I have ever had to go through. For a good part of my life I ha
ve dealt with extreme back pain. I was born with degenerative disc disease. Which means that I am
susceptible to ruptured discs, now I am sure jumping out of motor boats, playing football, and riding my bike halfway across the country have not helped this fact either. So needless to say last year about this time I found myself struck down with absolute inability to do anything but sit. I could not straighten my body past a 90 degree. I couldn’t walk more than a couple steps before the pain got so severe that all I could do was fall to the ground in wincing pain. I am simply saying all this because I know what it means to endure, I know how it feels to be laying on my back. I know what it feels like to Find myself fighting so hard to get up and not knowing if I was ever going to be able to run again. Or if I was going to be able to play basketball, or simply walk up my driveway without incredible pain.
I found myself in the spring of the year getting a little better and ended up going back to friendships, a mission organization I had worked with before. I was doing great. My back was better and I finally felt like I was back on the right track when I jumped out of a truck holding 10 pounds of milk in both hands. I had gone from good to worse then before. I found myself unable to help like I had planned on helping. Now I love to serve. It is what makes me come alive. But I found myself unable to do just about everything. I was able to help doing some much needed things in the office, but still found it so hard to feel like I couldn’t do all that I wanted to do to help. It was hard.
It is not easy to endure hardship with a smile on, or try and act like everything will be OK when I don’t know if it will be. After a couple weeks I was doing a little better and ended up going down to Haiti with the ship and I was so excited to be feeling better and to serve the Haitan people. But on the first day down there I smashed my finger in a chain binder, requiring 10 stitches. Luckily we were doing a medical mission so I had great medical work right there on the ship. So there I was once again having to endure the pain of smashing my finger and then the pain of not being able to minister the way I had planned, but instead through security on the ship. Which turned out to be a blessing in disguise and I ended up getting to minister to lots of dock workers and ship crew on my late nights. A couple days after I smashed my finger I was getting a ride back from the compound from one of our friends. I stepped out of the car and am not really sure why the driver took off, but somehow I had managed to have my foot under the rear tire of the car. So when the driver took off my foot got pinned under the tire. I yelled back up back up, but the driver didn’t hear me so he just stopped with my foot directly under the tire. Then he finally started driving forward, but then my friend Susannah started yelling, “back up, back up.” And then he panicked and backed up again running over my foot twice, luckily it was just my heel and so I was not injured to badly. I quickly became known as the guy that has everything happen to him. I had back problems. Then I smashed my finger. And now I am getting run over by a car. When would it stop?
I don’t really know why, and it certainly wasn’t easy, but I tried so hard to have
huponome (cheerful endurance). Somedays I would just cry out and try and figure out why I had to endure all this pain. But I do know that quite a few people had come up to me through all the different places I had been to tell me how much it ministered to them; of how I could remain cheerful while enduring such pain. I had many people tell me, how much it meant to them the fact that despite my pain I was still there trying to serve with a smile on my face. I don’t really have an answer on how to do it, other than to focus on something other then the pain. I would focus on Jesus and one thing that really helped was knowing that I deserve pain, I deserve death. We all do. We have all sinned against God and deserve to die for that. It is only by the grace of God and the love that He showed us by sending Jesus to take our place and pay the penalty for our sins.
And for some reason knowing that this was what I deserved made me know that God can take it away. I believe in healing. I have prayed for people and seen them healed. But I have also seen God not heal people, and I don’t have an answer for that. And that is OK with me.
But for whatever reason God would not take away the pain and so I endured. Some days were harder than others and I am sure somedays the cheerfulness was non existent. But I tried to not let it get me down. I focused on God and knew that He was in control. The key is simply to never focus on ourselves. I know it is a hard thing to do, especially in this culture, but it is the only way. If an athlete focuses on his pain he will never make it. He has to focus on the goal. He has to know that no matter how much it hurts he must finish. And as Christians we are called to an even higher standard, because not only must we focus on Christ and the goal there, but we must also have
hupomone
(endure it cheerfully) and not out of obligation.
We will all endure something. It is inevitable. The question is how will you endure? Will you do it cheefully or grudgingly out of obligation? Will you focus on yourself and the pain? Or will you focus on something greater than you?
Over the next year I am sure we will encounter mean different types of hardships and afflictions, but in the end a majority of how the year will impact us comes down to our attitude in regards to enduring. And I pray and hope that we can look beyond our selves and focus on the bigger picture. I pray and hope that at the end of the race we will all look back and know that we raced with
Hupomone.
I hope this helps shine a picture on our team name.
And just so everyone knows God has granted me grace beyond measure. I can now do all the things I love to do, run and play basketball and simply walk without pain. Today I walked 2 and a half miles with a 35 pound pack on my back with no pain whatsoever. But I now continue on knowing that each step I take is a gift from God. So Praise the Lord!!
