Resilience. Perseverance. Endurance.
When I think about these words, I think about stories of great triumph despite seemingly impossible odds. Holocaust victims who kept praising God while living in concentration camps under unthinkable circumstances. All of our brothers and sisters in Christ experiencing physical, life-threatening persecution for the sake of Christ around the world.
Lately, I’ve been feeling this tension, this shifting. In the world. In our country. In the Church as a whole. And in myself. I’m not talking about a tension that’s political or relational or emotional, but one that is spiritual. The tension of living in the world while being called to not be of the world. The tension of speaking truth in love and having hard conversations. The tension of this wrestling I can feel in the depths of my soul, this tug-of-war between the things I’ve always done as a child of wrath (my old self), and the things I know I need to do as a new creation in Christ amidst a world that seems to be falling apart.
All of this leads me to resilience—another word that the Lord has had swirling around in my brain for some time. The idea of learning to be resilient in this tension.
We all have the capacity to endure some incredible hardships and trauma without allowing them to completely steal all the joy from our lives. I know this because I have lived it. From my elementary years to early adulthood I experienced some incredibly difficult and dark things—some of my own volition, others forced on me. My point is that even those who have experienced horrific things can still find beauty in something as simple as a butterfly or a sunrise, in the laughter of a child, or seeing the couple that’s been married for 60+ years still hold hands as they walk through Publix.
We all have a desire for things to be good and life-giving. I wonder what you go to in order to fulfill that… I have learned from experience that anything other than God will not give you what your soul is longing for. Yes, human beings are incredibly resilient, but all that resilience can evaporate in a moment. We are both highly capable of persevering, yet unpredictably fragile. We can endure the challenges of life for a long time, but seemingly all of a sudden we just want to quit and say, “I’m done.”
There are many passages of Scripture that call us to persevere and endure in trials …
“...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
Romans 5:3-5
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
James 1:2-4
“You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised.”
Hebrews 10:36, NIV
… but how do we do that?
Think about the Israelites. They wandered through the wilderness for 40 years—a journey that shouldn’t have taken more than a few weeks. They saw the power of God on full display, witnessing miracle after miracle, and even saw the presence of God Himself. Yet, they doubted, they grumbled, they complained… some even mutinied. Of the two million-ish people who left Egypt, only two entered the Promised Land. In his book, Resilient: Restoring Your Weary Soul in These Turbulent Times, John Eldredge explains the purpose of the Exodus story beautifully.
“This is more than a moment in Jewish history. It is recorded for us as one of the greatest analogies of human experience, our journey from bondage to freedom, from barrenness to promised land. Ultimately, it is the precursor to our journey of salvation, from the kingdoms of darkness to the kingdom of God.”
This story, and every other in the Bible, is meant to be more than inspirational. They are meant to be incarnational—providing real-life examples that lead us to a faith-filled and faith-fueled way of embracing life and the world.
As we see in the story of the Israelites, resilience doesn’t come from trying harder. True, transformational resilience comes from a deep, real, intimate union with God. This goes beyond faith in God, and even obedience to Him, and starts to transform our hearts because we have a tangible relationship with Him—He is real and present. We see this beautiful example in the life of our Lord and Savior. He teaches us how to develop this union with the Father, how to be grafted into Him, in John 15.
“I am the true grapevine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch of mine that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned and purified by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful unless you remain in me. “Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing.”
John 15:1-5 NLT
So, if we want to learn to live in this tension and endure, the only way to escape with our eternal lives is to heal our union with God. Let’s look at a few practical ways to do this, and start today. (I will only share a few here, but there are more practices that will take you further and deeper in John Eldredge’s Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad.)
1. Loving God
Allow yourself to learn how to really love God, daring to go beyond the mental knowledge that you should love Him into the depths of loving Him with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength (Mark 12:30). In other words, with your emotions, your thoughts, and every fiber of your physical being—as a whole, connected, spiritual being.
Take time each day to sit with God and tell Him just how much you love Him in your own words and for your own reasons, always remembering we are only able to love because He loved us first (1 John 4:19).
2. Benevolent Detachment
You were never meant to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. So, take a moment every day to give God the things you’re carrying—the worries, the fear, the stresses of life—for he cares deeply about you (1 Peter 5:7). Have an ongoing conversation with Him throughout the day to create a habit of letting Him carry your burdens (Matthew 11:28-30). Get specific, get personal.
3. Consecration
Give the Holy Spirit the authority to govern your mental and emotional life. Ask Him to be in charge of how you think, how you feel, what you say, and what you do. Allow Him to give you His perspective on situations and people, rather than speculating and allowing the worry to suck the life out of you.
When done consistently, faithfully, and genuinely these practices will begin to heal your hurting heart, to soften the hard places, and transform you into the image of your Maker. They will develop a resilience in you that permeates every aspect of who you are—mentally, emotionally, physically, and, most importantly, spiritually. As we have learned throughout the month, these are all deeply, intricately connected. We are whole, eternal beings made to live in union with God and make Him known.
The question has always been, and will always be this simple … Where will we take our hunger, our thirst, for life to be good, to be more?
My precious brothers and sisters in Christ, come to the River of Life, to God Himself, and allow Him to fill you up to overflowing so that you will never be found wanting again. True joy and contentment are found in the unending well of God’s love, grace, and kindness. Come, and drink.
“Come, Lord Jesus,
startle me
with your presence, life-sustaining as air,
to open my heart
to praise you,
to open my mind
to attend to you,
to open my spirit
to worship you,
to open me
to live my life
as authentically and boldly as you lived yours.
Come, Lord Jesus,
be with me
in my longing;
come, stay with me
in my needing;
come, go away with me
in my doing;
come, struggle with me
in my searching;
come, rejoice with me
in my loving.”
Guerrillas of Grace, Ted Loder
FOOTNOTES
1 All Scripture references are ESV unless otherwise noted.
2 John Eldredge, Resilient: Restoring Your Weary Soul in These Turbulent Times (Nashville, TN: Nelson Books), 2022, p. 10.
3 John Eldredge, Get Your Life Back: Everyday Practices for a World Gone Mad (Nashville, TN: Nelson Books), 2020.
4 Ted Loder, Guerrillas of Grace: Prayers for the Battle (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress Publishers), 1981, p.95.