Endure: Building Faith for the Long RunSample

Waiting well

How can I keep all this up when I feel like all I do is fall behind? How can God be good—or even faithful—when His promises of love and power haven’t come through yet? It can be a downright war on our spirit as we wait on the movement of God.

Few of us desire to grow in patience because that requires exercising patience to see it grow. We must wait, hope, and watch while the world swirls around us. It is incredibly hard to keep pressing forward when we feel as if we are stuck in neutral. Yet, even as we feel left behind and alone, God gives us promises to push us forward.

God’s love is also promised in your days to come. He will not leave you nor forsake you. He is going to finish the work of glory and grace that He began in your life from the moment you trusted Him as your everything. He loves you so much that He looks forward to the day when faith will become a sight for you.

But, as it is written,
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him.”

Jesus is preparing a place for you in glory right at this moment. He is ready and excited to see you face to face when that day comes, but that does not stop Him from loving you right now. Your life is a story arc of the love of God played out in real-time. From the beginning of your life to where you are now to eternity to come, God loves you. You cannot remind yourself of His love for you enough. His love will sustain you in the dark recesses of your waiting.

Jesus is our ultimate example of what life looks like when it is fully entrusted to the will of the Father. Hebrews reminds us that Jesus is the greater and better version of any hero of the Old or New Testaments. Hebrews also reminds us that those men and women who have gone before us have aspects of their lives worth emulating:

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 endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

These witnesses looked to the promise of the Savior, knowing that a faithful God would provide the Messiah He had promised. That act of faith was credited to them as righteousness. It is that act of faith that we, as the church, are supposed to emulate. As they followed God and waited faithfully for Christ, we are to follow their example as we press forward with endurance.

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