One of the sorrows of a pastor is the great discrepancy between various Christians when it comes to the area of endurance...the apparent strength of some and the ongoing weakness of others. I think of the heroes of the faith I have studied, the martyrs burning in Nero's garden and the great missionaries who endured so much for the sake of the gospel. And I think of others who deny the faith daily by their crippled testimonies and their wobbly walk.
Jesus gave us this troubling statement. "He who endures to the end will be saved."
How is it that some endure, while others cave in to the pressures of circumstance?
Luke 14:25-28 says: "Now great multitudes went with Him. And He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it?"
Do you count the cost? Do you ever stop to think, "What if this life of the believer ceases to stir my emotions?" "What if I tithe and believe God for increase, but for some reason I experience great financial difficulty?" "What if God allows me to be placed in hurtful, painful situations...even in the midst of persecution?"
"What if...I have to give everything that I am and everything that I have...to follow Him?" "What if the days get long and dreary and I work until I feel that I'm going to drop?"
"What if He doesn't allow me to fulfill personal dreams?"
Some begin well...but they do not finish well...or at all. Others seem to get off to a slow start, and they stumble and fall along the way, but all the while God keeps changing them and transforming them, and they finish with a blaze of glory!"
It is not how you start, or even how you have run that counts....but how you finish.
On one occasion Jesus spoke of those who have no root. No root downward means no fruit upward.
In Georgia we had a common tree known as the Black Locust Tree. It was a fast growing shade tree which had some unusual characteristics. It's roots, though not as deep as some trees, were exceedingly tenacious. You could chop down a Black Locust tree and new growth would come up from the trunk and from the roots running outward under the surface of the ground. At one time we cut down a huge Black Locust tree in the backyard and months later little saplings were coming up out near the highway in the front yard...because the tree sends out 'runner' type roots that go long distances underground and then send up new growth. You can chop it, burn it and even let it suffer drought...even uproot it, and new growth keeps coming up to replace the old.
Black Locust Christians are like that. They can get chopped at, burned, and suffer drought in the spiritual lives, and yet they still have a root that goes down in the right soil and there is new growth that comes back. "Struck down", the Apostle Paul says, "But not destroyed". That's the Black Locust Christian.
Psalm 1 says, "He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season; His leaf shall not wither and whatever he does shall prosper."
There are a number of things that we endure as believers. Sometimes it is hardship. There is the hardship of persecution, of physical difficulties, of leadership, of various attacks from satan.
The Word says, "Endure hardship as a good soldier".
Sometimes it is chastisement. The Word tells us that God chastens us in order to correct us and bring us back into alignment with His will.
Whatever the difficulty, we need endurance.
How do we endure? We endure through Revelation. By that, I mean that we need constant revelation of Christ to our hearts. We need a revelation of His greatness in the midst of our storm...We need a revelation of His love, when our hearts are growing cold. We need a revelation of Heaven where we will be with Christ, when we are tempted to throw in the towel.
And we need to count the cost. If our roots are deep and tenacious in the Word of God and in fellowship with Him, we can endure. Like the Black Locust tree, the assaults that come against us will only force us to send up new life in new places and our testimony will be one of endurance.
May the Lord grant you this great gift. It is so needed in this generation. Black Locust Christians, who can be chopped at, burned, and even seem to be uprooted...yet they still have a testimony of the faithfulness of God in their lives.
