Perseverance builds

Perseverance builds

Tonight we will continue understanding our journey to spiritual maturity.

Last week we looked at the account of Jesus and his followers in the boat and Jesus warnings about the yeast of the pharisees and the Yeast of leaven.
His warnings were not rebukes, they were an invitation to grow up to maturity and not to be distracted by the things of the world.

Perhaps you ask the question Why is it important for us to understand these messages?
The answer is this.

Sometimes people have little ambition, happy to have a job, earn some money, educate our children and live a happy life.

Others have big dreams of building an empire for themselves so that everyone will be amazed at what they accomplished.

Both of these ambitions are selfish, they are all about me, myself, and I.

God created you and I on purpose, with purpose.

His plans most times are bigger than ours. So we need to be prepared for his preferred future for our lives.

God’s ultimate blessing for our lives are found in his perfect will for our lives.

Perseverance builds
Often we find ourselves going through some kind of difficulty or struggle.
Most times our first response is to blame someone else or something else.
Or rebuke the devil, if the devil wasn’t so devilish I would feel sorry for him, because we like to blame him, and rebuke him when we are experiencing difficulties.

Sometimes the reason we are experiencing difficulty is because God is just and scripture says that we reap what we sowed.

Galatians 6:7
Do not be deceived, God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that he also will reap.

So if we sow anger, we reap anger from others, if we are dishonest. We reap those consequences, if we lie cheat, steal, we rap consequences.

In the same way,
When I sow love, I get lover, when I sow mercy, I receive mercy,.

What has this got to do with perseverance?
Romans 5 v 1-5

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Lets dig briefly into this passage of scripture and extract some gems of truth.

Paul writes that we glory in our sufferings

How do we glory in our sufferings?

We rejoice in times of difficulty

BECAUSE

We know that suffering produces perseverance

Perseverance is the ability to keep going even when circumstances seem impossible.

To often we pray and ask God to remove something which he either arranged or allowed.

We pray for God to remove the fire, instead of asking him to help us through it.

So why do I need perseverance?

Because God’s plans for our lives are bigger than who we currently are, if we don’t develop the ability to keep going when things get tough.

Then we will never fulfill his call on our lives.

James 1 v 2-4
Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,
3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

James says the purpose of perseverance is so that we can be mature and complete not lacking anything.

Without maturity, we will give up, with out being complete or fully restored from the effects of sin we will give up.

When we are mature and complete we will have all the requirements built into our lives through persevering and learning the lessons of life.

This journey is not about never failing, because as we know, we fall many times,

So its not about falling, its about getting up every time we fall, in time we will not fall any more because we have learnt how to stand.

Because failure teaches us how to win.

And perseverance builds