Day 4104 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 12:7 NIV

What is endurance?

Is it some measure of physical capacity that’s determined by such things as a pace in a race? Is it the ability to withstand that which seems intent upon seeing if we can? Is it the ability to stand in the face of that which is adamant that we can’t? Is it the asking of someone to accept something seemingly unacceptable? Is it the accepting of something that we’d rather not admit we’re somewhat appreciative of having to hold? Is it the ability to hold our breath or ensure our strength doesn’t run out until the time’s run out in whatever competition we’ve entered or been entered in?

Is it as simple as a person competing only against themselves and our self’s tendency toward seeking always for such things as the ease of personal safety and the simplicity of ongoing comfort?

Is it the knowing that comfort can only take us as far as we’re willing to allow our weakness to define us, a junction created thanks to our willingness to always let it decide for us?

I personally contend that endurance is the audacity to see the honesty of the trials and torments laid out before us, embrace them for the struggle they dare offer us and smile as they do as they’re intended to. I believe it’s the ability to seek always for our breaking point so as to move it further into the future and that away from failure and fear. I think it the courage to count the costs, realize we’ve not enough within ourselves to cover them, but move forward anyway as we trust that another will help when our best betrays us.

Yes, I believe that endurance is there to help us learn how much we have to give, that it’s more than we could have ever imagined had the hard days not happened, and so too entirely too little to allow us, as pride would always prefer, to do this on our own and all by ourselves.

Indeed, endurance is something of an entirely personal path paved in this craze that craves hardship, difficulty, danger even. It’s this mindset that’s made up of making choices that seek only for the better we can be, even if our continuing to for such seek only leaves us embittered unto ourselves. It’s the mind asking that we start and the heart demanding we never quit. It’s going as far as we can go, taking as much as we can take, breaking every bone and belief that we can break.

All to see what there is inside of us that can’t be broken, that can’t be lost, that we’ll not lose when all else is gone.

Sadly it’s also a place that few find anymore. And that’s because in a world made of a society based in such concessions as safe places and technological addictions, well, we just don’t have to. For now. Rather most days find us all vastly lost in either this ongoing ease with what seems an almost transcendent tranquility or unashamedly seeking the same.

For such is life here.

It’s become this pastime of sorts in which we only at best sort of try and that only every other day at best to give our best to only whatever it is that doesn’t bring us struggle or stress. Why? Because as a people we’ve bought into this lie that’s caused our lives to be lived as if hardship is entirely too heavy to carry. That our being challenged is uncalled for. That such weights as worry and danger are things which should only bring us again unto anger as they’re simply unfair as far as we care.

But you see, that’s kind of the question:

How much do we care?

How much does something mean to us? What all are we willing to risk in order to find or feel whatever it is that we personally consider to be the best? I mean, we hear all the time all these folks talking all this smack about their living their best lives and always seeking to continue the same. But just how much does your best mean? What is your best? What is best for you? What best can you give unto someone else? Or is our best only some means to some life in which we’re the only ones who ever win whatever it is that only we want?

Is my best something meant only to benefit me?

Has my meager measure of my best in times past proven only to betray me?

If you’ve read any of these posts for any time at all, which judging by the engagement numbers, you haven’t, but if you had then you’d know perhaps that within my past there lived as vastly different man. He was this lazy, gluttonous, shy, obese monster of a man. All he did was as little as he could. He thought then that the only things good were those which made him feel the same. He believed in this way of life in which everything was easy, no sweat or struggle needed. Indeed, this man who knew to seek that version of best hidden behind comfort and disinterest sought and only ever offered the same.

And that to everything.

Because he was afraid, and that of everything.

Afraid of trying as he knew he didn’t have very much to offer unto said trials. Terrified of being proven as weak as his weeks of sitting on the couch had made him. Scared of sweat as he thought it something of a danger to be seen struggling so much. Didn’t want the world to see who he’d become because he’d become numb to life itself, proven in that he hadn’t lived one in basically the entire time he had one.

I think back on that man from time to time, not wondering how he’s doing as I know that part. No, I think back rather on all the lessons learned since he was lost. I think of all the improvements that have been made ever since he was moved out of the way. I think of all the days I’ve gotten to enjoy what’s now a life in which trying is the pastime and I spend all the time I can doing just that. Indeed, I often think back about that life that I lived not with that man but as that man.

What happened to him you ask?

Me and God killed him.

Just the other night I found myself thinking about him who was me as recently as about a decade ago. Thought about all the foods I used to love and how many of them I’ve literally not thought of in those same 10+ years now. Thought about all the things I used to do and how most of them seem entirely boring to me these days. Thought about all the plans and priorities I’d had back then and how they always considered who I am now but a dream too hard to find and thus so far away.

Yes, I’ve known that life balking at endurance as to endure was never anything I knew anything of. And that’s because this world teaches us to run and hide at the very first sign of hardship or danger. It inspires us to unleash our anger upon anything which in any way even hints that it might prove hard or heavy. Yes, this world is so lost inside this hurry to be always safe, always comfy, always successful and seen that all we see is a people running away from all of those things which would prove them weak, scared, uncertain.

Only problem is that it just so happens that those are the only places in which life is found.

Because we’re told in Scripture that life does not consist inside an abundance of possessions. And whenever I’ve heard or thought of that verse having learned it there I’ve always read it in terms of material possessions. And indeed, that very much applies as, well, naked we came into this life and we’ll be soon stripped again of all we’ve amassed within this world as we leave it for a life elsewhere.

But what if it also applies to matters of the mind and materials of the heart?

What if life doesn’t consist inside an abundance of such commonalities as weakness, laziness, fear? What if life isn’t there hiding inside a life lived afraid to try and unwilling then to ever even consider it? What if life isn’t waiting for us to find it inside anything, anyone, anywhere?

What if life is right in front of us unhidden within those trials we’ve come to believe we’re always best to avoid? What if life is waiting inside the challenges we always refuse and the changes held in opportunities we continue to lose thanks to our unwillingness to risk whatever we have? What if life is the measure of who we are and the better we can always become, a better we then betray inside of every single day that we decide only to stay whoever we are?

Don’t get me wrong, I know why we do it. Again, I’ve lived a life as that man who did it. I know full well thanks to plenty of personal memories that version of life in which all I cared to be was only what I already was. I know the life spent drunk on the decision to avoid danger. I know the life spent worried stiff as to the stress of personal struggle. I know the life in which I chose every single day to hide from anything and everything hard so that those around me didn’t have to see how weak I was and how fast I’d break because of it.

But friends, the breaking comes no matter what.

It can either come nice and slow, sneaking in between snacks and naps until it finally happens upon us in our later years in which we finally find that everything from walking to breathing becomes entirely difficult as our bodies are then finally breaking down because we never gave them anything other than pleasure and ease.

It can come inside an end we find when this world finally proves it wasn’t our home and we’ve then left to leave all we’d come to hold, every single thing we’d given our lives and minds trying to find.

It can come wrapped within worry that we continue to put off as long as we can until that day comes when we can’t put it off again.

The breaking will come for all of us as all of us will find within this life, at some point, that place in which we fail, in which we fall, in which our best proves fatal and there all we have, all we hold, all we are is finally seen for what it’s been allowed to become.

So what have we allowed our best to be?

Is it really that person who’s afraid of everything that everyone else says is scary, such as change? Is it that person who refuses to be challenged as you think you’ve already arrived at the very pinnacle of your life? Is it the person who rejects any suggestion that they can improve? Is it the person who seems to think they’ve entirely too much to lose should they ever dare to risk what they have for the better they’ve not?

Or is it that person who dares still to believe that better is something we cannot from here nor now see but rather then insists that better still waits somewhere up ahead at the end of journey that can be however hard, however scary it wants because it just doesn’t matter the journey but rather our finding the best possible outcome?

Indeed, I’ve become of the belief that there’s a certain excitement that’s supposed to exist inside our understanding of better and best. It’s this wonder as to not what it is but rather where it waits.

Alas we sadly spend most of our lives thinking that both better and best are destinations in this life.

They’re not.

They’re rather both promises that we’re given these lives either to spend trying forever to find or rather to lose thinking we already have.

And again, I know that for a fact because I once believed that I had found my best and that it couldn’t get no better. After all, what’s better to people than doing only whatever they want? What’s more satiating to the appetite than our eating everything we like and as much as we can afford? What’s more appealing than seeking our person pleased?

What’s more fun than playing video games and forgetting what the sun looks like?

Life.

Danger. Difficulty. Risk. Loss. Fear. Worry. Anger. Sadness. Frustration.

Failure.

Yes, failure is fun. Falling apart is an amazing feeling. Finding yourself stood face to face with frustration and shame is among the greatest things that can befall a man!

Why?

Because they inspire us to try. They ask that we embrace who we’ve become but with a suddenly known refusal to accept it as the end of our story. They ask that we come to terms with the life we’ve turned in and for once stop turning over our every improvement to the meat grinder that is our laziness and lust.

They ask that we rid ourselves of the weakness that has become us with the help of He who sends us through torment and tempest so as to help us refine us through both fire and fear.

Why?

Because we’re not there.

We know nothing of that place in which our purpose is proven. We’ve never been to where our best remains hidden. We have no idea how to find who we are and why we’re here unless and until we learn to appreciate failure and make friends with fear.

Why?

Because what is life if we’re never so afraid of staying who or where we are that we finally move toward who and what we’re not?

And what aren’t we?

The best we can be.

And where aren’t we?

Home.

And I know this for certain because here is where fear is felt and failure is found and frustration is known and weakness is allowed to win the hearts and minds and lives of all those who run away from them thinking them enemies simply because they ask of us a willingness to endure them. We’ve become a people who run away from everything hard. And sure, there’s seemingly some logic to that as, well, we can always manage that which is easy.

We can’t fail that which is simple. We can’t fall short of those things that never ask us to move. We can’t disappoint anyone in our enduring of things that we know we can endure.

And to a people of appearances, any sign of struggle such as that seen inside sweat or the fear which sometimes brings it, we know they make us look bad to those who think life here is meant to be always safe and endlessly easy.

Again, it isn’t.

This life is meant to break us so that we can be rebuilt. This life is meant to betray us so that we can learn what trust truly is and where best to place it. This life in this place is supposed to scare us, to scar us, to all but carve us to pieces until we have no peace in this place.

All so that we can learn to seek our peace in that piece of that place that He’s promised us it waits.

Friends, why would Heaven promise such things as peace and rest if such things could be found on the way?

He knows we’re more than willing to always stop hunting, stop trying, stop searching just as soon as we’ve found or felt whatever it was that we were looking for.

What then makes us think He’s going to let us know much if anything of peace, of rest, of comfort inside this world that is ruled by the prince of darkness and king of lies?

This is not the place in which we should seek our best lives.

This fallen world is merely the place in which we’re to live lives that leave us so ready to go home that such becomes our only hope and every prayer.

To finally be able to leave from here and go where everything exists that we cannot find and have not felt inside this world that’s running to hell.

See, this world does know something of endurance after all, but only the kind understood from an athletic perspective. For this world has proven of an endless capacity to keep running away from God and all He sends in the way of difficulty and growth. And that because this world knows nothing of the kind of endurance that’s understood from a humility perspective.

“For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.”

Get that? Training in godliness, as is done inside only a humbled willingness to do as asked here and “endure hardship as discipline”, it has value both for this life but also the life to come. And that’s because enduring the hardships that He sends us helps us learn to trust in His plans more than we do our preferences. It teaches us to have an appropriate understanding of our abilities and their inabilities so that we can come unto a growing trust in His being enough.

It teaches us how to say no to ungodliness and all wickedness as it inspires us unto the endurance that finds us ever willing and always trying and that inside a life in which we never stop walking with Christ even when His path eventually doesn’t veer away from what we fear. It teaches us to place our lives in His hands, knowing that His hands were pierced and His flesh was torn and His life was lost and all of that within this world in which we are but of which we’re not.

Because it teaches us to realize that pain and struggle found in life are but proof that we’re not yet to the promise.

All so that we can find the willingness to keep going. To press on.

To burn the boats and accept the fact that there is no version of this in which we ever care to go back to who we were nor where we’ve been because we finally see within them nothing we want to remain.

Forward is the only option.

And that because faith never stops and knows better than to turn around and look back.

Because that’s what endurance does. It just keeps going. No matter how hard. No matter how scary. No matter how dangerous. It just keeps going through whatever keeps coming because endurance worries not of the process but rather only the promise.

And the simple fact is that God never once promised us an easy life here. And Jesus definitely didn’t show anything of a safe life either.

But He promised to be with us and to never once leave us until He got us where we’re going. Indeed, He who has began this good work of making us better will continue it until it is completed. And so if we’re still struggling, still stumbling, still sweating and crying and breaking and dying then we can be sure that we’re not yet where He died for us to go.

So keep going.

Endure the hardships. Embrace the dangers. Welcome fully the entirety of every single one of this life’s difficulties and disasters.

Why?

Because they help us find this place inside to which we can go when the going’s gotten so hard that even hope itself is all but gone. And, having been there and learned how to go back whenever and as often as needed, I’m telling you it’s a place unlike any other. And that’s because such things as worry and fear and compromise do not exist there.

Rather all that does exist there is a resolve so immovable that you find yourself finally willing to just keep moving no matter what keeps coming because it knows that where we’re going is all that matters and thus that whatever comes along the way means nothing.

Seek for that place paved in a humble willingness to endure hardship my friends.

For it’s the place in which peace begins.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold