The Stewardship Journey

Enduring through Hope

            In 1952, young Florence Chadwick stepped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island, determined to swim to the shore of mainland California. She’d already been the first woman to swim the English Channel both ways. The weather was foggy and chilly; she could hardly see the boats accompanying her. Still, she swam for fifteen hours. When she begged to be taken out of the water along the way, her mother, in a boat alongside, told her she was close and that she could make it. Finally, physically and emotionally exhausted, she stopped swimming and was pulled out. It wasn’t until she was on the boat that she discovered the shore was less than half a mile away. At a news conference the next day she said, “All I could see was the fog…I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it.”[1]

These days we have a lot of fog around us. The difficult and uncertain economic environment can keep us from being able to focus and to persevere with endurance.

Throughout the Bible we observe over and over again that trials and the moments when we have to endure are often the most rewarding and character building.

James tells us this in chapter 1:2-4 “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” 

Paul tells us in Romans 5:3-4: “…we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” 

From these verses we see that: we have hope so that we can face trials, we experience trials so that we can have endurance and we can endure because we have hope.  Sometimes as we go through the trials of life we easily become like Florence Chadwick, fatigued, fearful and hopeless.  

Here are six things that you can do to ENDURE through the fog and not lose hope:

 1.      Embrace what is true by reading God’s word (Joshua 1:8-9)

2.      Never lose focus of what you put your hope in (Matthew 14:30)

3.      Don’t stop giving (2 Corinthians 8:1-5)

4.      Understand what is most important to you (Matthew 6:21)

5.      Realize tomorrow will be a new day (Lamentations 3:22-23) 

6.      Encourage others (Hebrews 10:24)

 As you go through the trials and fog of life may you have hope to endure!