Resilience and Perseverance
I’ve been mulling over this topic for many months, and reading many articles on what makes a resilient person. What is perseverance, and what is resilience? How do we deal with disappointment well and grow from it? The Bible speaks so much about us being steadfast, perseverant, and in the midst of storms remaining in a place of faith and hope. Yet so often as Christians we want to go through life without having to face these things, and our prayers are mostly a long list of what we would like God to either do for us or protect us from.
Do we have a 1st world mentality? What do I mean by that? I have watched a lot of interviews with Christians who live in the 3rd world or the ‘persecuted’ church. Their mentality is in such stark contrast to our own that it left me challenged, and with the question as to why?
They expect persecutions and trials, it’s a part of their everyday life. They also go as far as to count it a privilege to suffer or die for Christ’s sake. One interview was of a young teenage girl who had seen most of her family brutally killed for being Christians, and her response was that she counted it an honour for them to die like Christ, and to understand the cost it took for God to see His son be tortured, suffer and die. It blows my mind!
Spiritually in our comfortable 1st world environment, have we been anesthetized by our surroundings? Have we fallen asleep spiritually? Of course no one wants to suffer, no one wants to be persecuted. I’ll put my hand up to that. So how do we live with a different mentality, and perspective?
I’m so challenged at the moment, I believe the only way I can do that is to make sure that I am dominated by my Spirit in Christ, rather than being dominated by my flesh. This requires sacrifice, because the flesh is the element that I know I feel the most, and demands attention the most. I know it only too well!
However if I’m not daily building my spiritual muscle, laying down the flesh, and making sacrifices for our King, then when that storm hits, my roots are so shallow that I cannot withstand the storm, and am tossed to and fro by every wave of circumstance.
I remember so clearly one night sitting with James my husband in ICU, when he was suffering the most from Leukemia, and it got to the point where my heart was so sore I just couldn’t take it any more. My heart was literally breaking. Very quietly I could hear God speaking in the midst of the pain, “I’ve been there, I know, I’m with you.” What a revelation I had that night, of what God went through to watch His ONLY son be tortured beyond recognition, and die a brutal death on a cross, when he didn’t deserve it, but chose it anyway. I sobbed that night, because for the first time the harsh, painful realization hit me of His incredible love and sacrifice for us. No wonder He had to turn His face away, the pain must have been too much to bear!
Facing death brings a lot of questions, but funnily enough a lot of clarity to life. It lifts your perspective, because everything else pales into insignificance. When you’re there nothing matters apart from what investment you’ve made into your Spirit, into your family, into others. Things like the money, the house, the car, the image, just fade into insignificance. You withstand by what you hold inside. When squeezed, you see what comes out.
James was a joker, a fun guy. But there was so much more to him than that. He had been through the storms in life. He’d grown in perseverance, and resilience. He lost his dad to divorce at a young age, a father that cut him out of his life, went from wealth to poverty, supported his mum through cancer and lost her too, put himself through University, trained to race professionally, ran his own businesses (having to start over numerous times), dealt with loneliness, a failed immigration, bankruptcy, a wife that was ill for many years, numerous house moves, and then his diagnosis and treatment. Life had not been kind to him. Yet as his wife I watched him face life with an incredible ability to remain thankful and positive, always choosing to trust in God and have faith to overcome. He would often wrestle with the flesh to just work harder or do it on his own. Yet every time he would come back with a repentant heart and surrender again to God. Knowing He was the only giver of true life. His roots grew deeper each time he made that choice. He became resilient, facing difficulty with such assurance it would baffle me. He was like a ball that always bounced back.
We’re like the parable in Matthew 7:24–27. We build by the choices we make in this life. But it depends what we build with and build on. Choosing daily to follow the Spirit’s leading, and the wisdom that can only be found in His Word:
“Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock.The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”
John 16:33 says, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
I continue to mull over what it is to be resilient, deal with disappointment well, and become a woman that allows the trials of this life to help me build my Spirit. To allow my roots to go deep into His love and His truth. So that when the winds blow and the storms hit, and as above its not ‘If’ but ‘When’, that I walk with the assurance that He’s got me, He will surround me, and He will see me through. I’ve seen Him do that throughout my life, I have no reason to doubt, but have to squash those doubts daily, cast them down, and leave them there.
I have to face that daily as we walk through our grief. As I try to retrain to get a job that will support Chloe and I. As I go to bed and think about the future, and carry the whole load of what lies ahead for us, and the responsibility I carry alone. As I adjust to being a single parent, and deal with the constant niggle of the loneliness that has been left after losing my soul mate. I have to make the constant choice to look up, and hold onto the one hand that remains forever — The hand of God, that will never fail.
I’m slowly trying to train this 1st world brain that just wants to have all the securities in life, and comforts around me so that I don’t have to struggle, that these things are like dust, they hold no security. To build my life on holding my security in the things that last. Only those things that can be found in God.
When I look around the world at the fateful events of late. I truly believe God is calling us as Christians to build, and rise to the challenge of being a resilient, persevering people that can not only withstand the storm, but reach out and offer hope to those that aren’t. A people who are spiritually led, not led by the circumstances that seek to overwhelm us. I want to be one of those people.
