Jeff Reynolds One desire: Running the RACE Faithful

The Mechanics of Endurance

While the sun slipped closer to the horizon, we pulled up in the parking lot of Mt. Hood. The sundown colors just started glistering off the snow. Arriving in a rush, we pulled out our gear and prepared to finish off the day with a run from the Mt. Hood Lodge down to Government Camp....on cross country skis.

My guide, a good friend with a crazy idea and assurances that he'd done it before, assured me that the runs are groomed all the way and that we would double-check the conditions before we committed, I followed. (Committed meant our wives would leave us and drive to Government Camp, hand out and wait for our arrival) We skied over to the trailhead and the snow was nice, the trail was groomed and everything looked good.

Waving to our wives, they jumped in the car and disappeared. I heard and felt the terminal reality of the doors closing, the night arriving, the car pulling away and the only way down in front of us.

However crazy or stupid this journey sounds, it started off fun and steeped in adventure. Gliding down the trail, the snow crisp and crusty, our skis tracked along in ruts of a groomed trail. Cross country skiing is exercise. It requires a steady focus and attention to detail in your skies and body. After a full day of tracking down by the lake, this glide to the Camp sounded perfect, but in reality, required some effort.

As we pulled away from the ski area slopes and came to the tree line, the crusty snow began giving way to six to eight inches of powder. Our skies started pushed through the crust and crashing down into the powder. The energy required to maintain balance and ski in the changing snow dialed up the anti and intensity. Then the groomed tracks vanished.

Pulling up, we stood looking at the way before us. We found ourselves standing far enough down the mountain we could not see the lodge or any real ski runs. And so far up the mountain from our destination, we wondered about going on. Time and dusk were quickly crashing down on us, and we stood facing a narrow corridor which appeared to be a road heading into the trees.

From here on......
It was all endurance.

Physical endurance is key in any kind of outdoor adventure, sport or competition. As the energy wains and the trail becomes more and more challenging, our ability to endure and overcome sets the pace, and ultimately the outcome. Typically we know the course we are heading out on and we train for it. Creating the situation in practice so that we will have the endurance and stamina to succeed in the race.

Most people rarely come to a point at which their physical endurance is severely tested. My son just ran his first marathon this past summer. His endurance, mental clarity, physical capacities, and commitment to his goal of finishing, bombarded by the course and the 26.5 miles, his heavy legs, and body.

Our physical breaking points are usually kept well at bay. I know deep down increasing endurance means pain, effort, energy and focus.

But, God doesn't seem to care about our perceived endurance levels or the boarders we place on ourselves. Boarders we place to keep us from finding out what the limits really are. He intimately knows our endurance level. And in his goodness, he leads us to places where we can shine in faith, hope, and love.

Now transition to spiritual realities.

As a baseline, we are sons and daughters who are loved by the truest love of all. A love that is so enveloping and efficacious, the Spirit can work into the fabric our very beings the image of the Son of God. We dwell in the promises from the Father, paid for and finished in the Son, and empowered in the Holy Spirit. Our baseline for spiritual endurance is Trinity's total and intimate knowledge of each of us. Before we say a word he knows it intimately. It is in this knowledge that the Father leads us. And it is with endurance and perseverance that we often find ourselves walking in the Spirit.

Endurance is a necessity for any physical competition. Endurance is an urgency for all spiritual pursuits.

So here three vital ways of endurance. Ways that remain vital in the struggle and will consistently require endurance from us.

1. Enduring in Prayer against a challenging opponent.
Rarely do we apply endurance to prayer. Instead, we just quit. Prayer is easy to quit. There appear to be no immediate consequences and most people rarely discuss their pursuit or discoveries of prayer. We are usually in our closet and no one really knows what we are giving to it or not.

We quit for practical reasons. There is no answer coming. We apply math to prayer and oddly begin thinking it's like going to a job. We put in the prayer, we get paid with answers. We say the words and it just happens. When we don't see answers in our timeline or as prescribed, we simply let go of the project.

The manifold wisdom, in all the mystery of his workings in all the Saints of God, is shining on the principalities and powers and enemies of Christ and daily reminding them they are finished. A job approach to prayer, described above, sounds like having crackers for lunch and calling it lobster. Prayer is powerful. Prevailing prayer is effective. It is the most powerful means at our disposal of ruling and reigning with Christ (2 Tim ). Some Saints find themselves in situations of ministry and co-laboring with Jesus that have no hope for a good outcome without endurance in prayer.

2. Enduring in love against huge disappointment
In this world, you will have trouble, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. (Jesus)
God is love. For God so loved he sent his Son. And we are called to love as the high mark of our witness to the world and the fabric of our communities in the Father.
To love like Jesus, in the face of the worst the world puts forth, requires endurance.

It is essential that the Saints endure in love in the constant and regular failures of the Christian community and the common expressions of Church we all experience. If you plan to endure in love, you become a mark for some of the most strident hits on your endurance.

Are going to take a few hits and quit? Love never fails, at least the kind Jesus revealed. But ours does, at least the version we put forth as love. When you are having trouble finding an ounce of love to give, that's when enduring in love kicks in. Loving anyway. Believing the best. Hoping against, "all is lost". Often the most gritty and raw endurance is required to bring forth the love that honors Jesus and his NAME. Like him, we will find ample opportunity to lay down our lives. That's not the problem. The real problem arrives when we need to alter the course of our lives, our day, our week for love. This is when endurance in love starts moving. It deepens when we run up against ingratitude, entitlement attitudes and the raw and uncomfortable feeling of being used. This is when enduring in love is vital and active, filled with faith and hope for a different outcome.

The kind of love Jesus demonstrated carried with it a powerful endurance in hope and faith. We can expect nothing less for ourselves if we choose to follow him.

3. Enduring in the Word against the Fulfillment of promise
Often patience is linked with endurance.

Revelation 1:9
"I, John, your brother and companion in the suffering and kingdom and patient endurance that are ours in Jesus.....

Patient endurance, the mark of Jesus on the apostle John, is ours also. We are his companions in patient endurance. This is how John describes the characteristics of his life following Jesus. This is the environment of taking God wholly and in the truth of his Word and his promise.

When the Word of God speaks directly to the way ahead of us, we can be assured patient endurance will be involved in seeing the promise fulfilled.

Often this is a point of departure. As we become more hard-pressed, as the temperature rises and we feel the squeeze of the storms and trials, endurance is tested to the limit. We feel we cannot go on. That the pressure is too intense, the pain too deep. We are tempted to believe we will never see the promises of the Lord fulfilled. It is at this point the Word itself inspires us to go on further, deeper and farther in love.

Who tests the limits or boundaries of their endurance on their own? Rarely anyone. High-level athletes regularly hit their peak endurance. Ultimate victory will always require an increase in endurances depth and width. Our opponent is doing the same.

I've met very few Christians who press hard enough after the Lord to run into the peak of their endurance. Yet God consistently will lead us to a place where he is everything for us and everything else looks to be passing away.

God calls us into a life that is super/natural. It cannot be done without Christ (John 15:5).
The upward high calling finds inspiration in the beautiful life of Jesus and we find that life deeply and richly through a partnership with patient endurance. The Word speaks the high calling. The Word of God witnesses to the pleasure of pleasing God.

Nothing of eternal value is accomplished outside of the will of the Father, in and through Christ Jesus.

Recently this verse has impacted my understanding of patient endurance.

Trust in the Lord, and do good;
    dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness Psalm 37:3

Dwelling in the land - with all its difficulties and troubles - requires perseverance and endurance. Dwelling where God has called us and filling that place up with the knowledge of the Lord requires endurance and patient in hope that will bring you to a point where endurance is required.
Befriending faithfulness may be another way of saying endure in the Word and promise of God with resolute faith and patient hope.

Through Christ and patient endurance, we will find the ever-increasing grace and glory we need to be partakers of the kingdom of God as it unfolds daily in our lives.

http://jeffreynoldsonedesire.blogspot.com/2014/11/why-is-prayer-house-empty-or-is-it.html

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