Thought For The Day – Perseverance

We live in unsettling times. We’re confined to our homes mostly. We’re not quite sure what the future holds – things are uncertain for us: what will happen with our health if the virus wreaks havoc through our country? What will be the effect on the health of our family? What might happened with our economy or the whole way of life. We are just not sure.

Some of us are suffering. For some there’s the relatively minor inconvenience of being confined at home but for others, the suffering of the isolation and the restriction hurts. Or perhaps you have extra responsibilities by having to look after relatives, your own children in a more intense way than you are normally used to.

James says in his letter that “the testing of your faith produces perseverance”. We’re certainly living through times that are testing us and the question is, are we going to learn perseverance through them? If you are like me, I don’t know if I have got the patience to learn perseverance. I want things to happen quickly immediately. I don’t want to invest the time – I’ve not got the patience for learning perseverance!

God is taking us through a time when we are having to be patient but we are having to wait and learn.  

Perseverance is partly about just keeping going and it’s a wonderful grace of God that he does as Christians keep us going right through to the end. We love older Saints who have kept going in their faith through their life right through to the end of their life. So as we go through testing times, holding onto our faith is perseverance. But it’s also developing strength through trials. We persevere and we develop muscles that we didn’t realise that we had: we recognise the new gifts, new skills, new trust, a strengthening of our faith

We pray that it might be a time like this during this confinement that we might grow in faith and grace and in love and in hope

James says “the testing of your faith produces perseverance”.

I know by God’s grace we will persevere

Every day we’ll be posting a new Elders’ Thought For The Day. You can stay up to date with these and all the video content we post to YouTube by subscribing to our channel.