“Endurance is the result of training.”
My usual ministry this month is to serve as a teacher’s aide at a preschool-type Care Center. However, on Friday I had an opportunity to visit Hope House, a residential hospice center. People of all ages are housed there getting care for life-threatening illnesses.
One such patient is a pastor suffering from cancer. Now wheelchair-bound, the man is visited daily by his wife, daughter and granddaughter. During our visit, my teammate shared the passage in Luke 5 about the paralytic whose friends lowered him from the roof to be near Jesus. She began to explain how the pastor was already healed in a way that far surpasses the physical.
During our time of prayer, the man’s family sang praises to the Lord and gave thanks for the encouragement we brought. His wife even began dancing in the Spirit. I sat in awe as a room seemingly full of death became consumed with life. These people so trusted God, we’re so committed to their relationship with Him, they could praise Him in the face of death, in the wake of suffering.
I have been struggling to learn what it means to endure. God has been revealing to me a heart of laziness and doubt. I have seen how I falter when things get hard of when my comfort is challenged. I am in the midst of one of the biggest commitments of my life and I have days where I barely stay afloat.
Yet I know He is at work. I think of that beautiful woman dancing with joy even while her husband’s physical body wastes away. She isn’t just enduring, she’s thriving. She lives with a heart full of the knowledge of His goodness.
Every time I choose obedience via the harder route, He is exalted. Every time I put my flesh aside and seek to serve, He is glorified. He is teaching me endurance and showing me that when I press in, when I choose Him over myself, true living begins.
That is when we thrive.
