Romans 5:3-4 “…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Maybe you’re like me! When I used to read verses like this, enduring sounded like a negative thing. Endure means to experience pain and suffering patiently, for a long time without yielding, to bear up under hardship and persecution. I thought, “I just hope that I can endure so I can develop character so that I can find hope! So that I can make it through—I hope!” Sometimes we think it means that we need to reach the depths of brokenness to be able to get through, persevering in order to grow.
But recently God showed me something I’d never seen before: enduring is not about focusing on what we are to learn through the hardship. Sometimes people are just cruel! Or life is not fair! No other reason! Instead, God wants us to look at it as a time to spend in the arms of our Father, enduring the love of God, enduring the revelation of God, while getting to know His heart, hearing Him say, “I’m sorry! I know how much this hurts!”
Romans 5:5, The Passion Translation, has this perspective of the result of enduring: “And this hope is not a disappointing fantasy, because we can now experience the endless love of God cascading into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who lives in us!”
When we go through hard times, we are often quick to share the details of the situation, but we forget to share the details of our time with Him through it. We spend so much time looking back at the difficulties, sometimes we miss how much He was with us, loving us through it. Through it, we learn how much Jesus is there for us. Through difficulties, our hearts learn how to love Him back through it. Take time to look back at a hard time until you can point to the Lord and say, “Ohhhh, I see You!”
Isaiah 41:10 Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.” Trials can be the most meaningful times of our lives with the Lord. We grow the most because we choose to obey His word. We choose to hang onto Him through it and not let go. Patience in tribulations produces trust in God at a much deeper level. This develops our character, making us believers in God’s Word which produces in us hope. Hope develops in our thoughts and emotions, convincing us that we will receive the blessings of God, just what He promised us.
The keys that unlock our endurance, and our joy, are knowing and standing on His promises by declaring His word. Believing and agreeing with heaven is where the power is; that’s where the authority comes from. What if our endurance is being stubborn about God? That’s how we become faithful and steadfast while empowered in the partnership of the Holy Spirit. And what if our endurance is being stiff necked and unbending about Satan? Becoming rigid and uncompromising about the things of the enemy?!
There is power when we fully believe through experience what the Lord said He can do, will do and has done for us. Our enduring is agreeing with the words of God in our situation instead of agreeing with the words of the enemy. If we learn to own the scriptures, then we can own the enemy.
By Emil Liko 5/1/26