What is the Point?: Discovering Life's Deeper Meaning and Purpose (18 page)

We are saved as a free gift, but this passage is not talking about salvation. It is talking about after we are saved and have need of endurance because we have a race to run. Look unto Jesus. Transcribe Him. Describe Him. Meditate on Him. Feast on Jesus day and night, night and day. Imitate Him until you become the very image of Him. He showed you how to run. He ran faithfully in obedience to the Father. He suffered but did not draw back. He did not quit, and He did not give up. It was because of the joy that was set in front of Him that He endured. In this same way you and I will endure.

The primary issue in perseverance is an ongoing faithfulness in small things with a humble spirit. For thirty-three years Jesus embraced endurance even before He went to the cross. The essence of perseverance is continuing to faithfully press into God and to serve Him in small things even in the face of frustrating circumstances or people resisting us. The perseverance of Jesus is expressed in His humility. He showed us the way of humility, and His goal is to fill the earth with voluntary love and humility that will continue forever.

Humility is the greatest virtue. It equips us to experience the greatest intimacy with Jesus because it is the way His heart moves. The only time Jesus described Himself was when He said that He was meek and lowly of heart (Matt. 11:29). He tells us to learn this from Him. His perseverance was not an issue of strength. We often think of perseverance as a strength competition. His perseverance was an issue of meekness and sticking with it to the end, and this is the issue in our race.

There are many passages in Scripture that talk about Jesus’s perseverance and patience. He did not have to persevere as God because God has no obstacles, but as a man He persevered in patient endurance. The marvelous truth of Jesus’s perseverance is set forth in Isaiah 49 where we catch a glimpse of the heart of this man and what motivated Him in endurance.

Jesus was hidden (Isa. 49:1–12). He was hidden even when He walked on the earth, and today He is hidden because most people do not recognize Him. He embraced smallness, and it shocked Isaiah. This gives us insight into God’s heart and what He is wanting from us. I wish I had pages and pages to write on the humility and servanthood of Jesus. It is one of my favorite subjects. I challenge you to do a study on this part of His personality as you feast upon Him. When we see His perseverance in small things, it causes us to love Him immensely and to want to imitate Him, giving Him the same kind of faithfulness He gave.

Paul prayed for the church in Thessalonica that their hearts would be directed into the patience of Christ (2 Thess. 3:5). The word
patience
is the same as perseverance here. The perseverance of Christ is not only about enduring the daily pressures and temptations. It not only means staying strong under the daily routine of smallness and the mundane when no one is supporting or affirming us. It means more. It means finishing our work and not quitting until the end.

Jesus said, “I finished the work. I did not quit. I went to the end of My last breath fulfilling the work I was sent to do.” (See John 17:4.) Paul had this same vision to finish well. He said, “I finished with a good spirit.” (See Acts 20:24.) A lot of believers turned against Paul, and at the end he said, “Believers throughout Asia have turned back, but I am going hard and not taking my cues by how people respond. I will go 100 percent to the end.”

I want to finish in the face of weakness and smallness. My ministry might get big or small. I may have no money or a lot of money; either way I want to do my assignment faithfully to the end. The Scripture says we can lose what we have gained if we are not diligent to keep it (2 John 8). Jesus will talk to me about how I responded even to the last day of my life.

Jesus lived in hiddenness and endured smallness, and so will we. In Colossians 3:3–4 it says that our lives are hidden with Christ in God and that when He appears, then we appear. The glory of my life is hidden with Jesus. The glory of my destiny and the truth about my life and how God is moved by it, though it is weak, is hidden. The glory of our lives will not be revealed to us until the age to come. It is hidden until Jesus is manifest globally.

As fragile as our love and humility are, they are glorious to God, and He says, “I will show you how much it has moved Me. I will show you who you are.” The person who doesn’t get you the most is you. You have written yourself off. Jesus is moved by how you said yes. You might think it is stupid. The Lord says, “Don’t. The glory of your life will be shown even to you on that day. Just stay steady.”

Hebrews 11:6 is a powerful verse. It says, “Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.” You have to believe that He is, and you have to believe He responds and rewards. The essence of faith that causes faithfulness is confidence that God is watching you when nobody else is, even when things seem small and you are hardly impacting anyone, yet you are reaching God.

Our prayer time is sometimes boring. The Bible is often confusing. At times there is no manifest presence of the Spirit on our hearts. The money is lacking, and we have needs. We are tired in body. Our family and friends are wagging their heads, but we do the will of God because we believe He is watching. We believe He is, and it moves Him. We believe it moves Him, and He will respond in His timing. This is the way Jesus did it! He is not asking us to do that which He did not do. He did it perfectly.

A
UTHOR OF
O
UR
F
AITH

He is the author of faith. He is the one who came up with the idea. Sometimes I just look at life, and I look up to Him and think, “You really could have done this any way You wanted too. You could have saved us and then just instantly made us perfect. Why the process? Why the race after salvation?” Just save them, kill them, and take them to heaven is what I would have done. Yet His way is the way of process.

As the author of our faith He is the one who says, “I will take you through the fire. I am going take you through the storm. You are that lump of clay, and I am going press until you are formed into My image.” It was His idea, and then He actually walked it out so He could be our High Priest who could sympathize with us (Heb. 4:15).

Look at Jesus. Meditate on Jesus. He did not run this race just as God. He ran this race as a man. That is why He is worthy. That is why we can look at Him and imitate Him. That is why He is our High Priest making intercession for us, because He did it as a man to show us how.

W
EARY AND
D
ISCOURAGED IN
S
OUL

For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls.

—H
EBREWS
12:3

The only way to combat the desire to quit is to keep our eyes on Jesus. I often feel weary and discouraged in my soul. I have a complaint in my heart, and I say, “I cannot do this. This is too hard. This whole pressing thing and running the race, I cannot do it. I want to coast for a little while. How about I just sit on the sideline and watch other people run. I am tired of the rigors of faith.” I get weary and discouraged in my soul.

Discouragement and weariness are the two primary things that knock most people out of the race. He called it a race for a reason. A race implies that you have to exert some kind of energy. Jesus said it was “violent” (Matt. 11:12). Paul called it a fight (1 Tim. 1:18; 6:12). Whoever said when you are a Christian you just passively receive everything? It takes effort to receive. We do not earn anything. We are not trying to get in a room we are already in. But we are entangled and weighed down, and it takes effort to get rid of the distractions so that we can receive from God. It takes labor to enter into rest.

In Matthew 11:12 Jesus said, “the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” Then a few verses later He looked up to heaven and prayed, “Thank You, Father, that even children can do this.” (See verse 25.) After that He said the part that most people quote, “My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (v. 30).

I used to read that and wonder, “Is it violent or is it easy and light? What is He saying?” The violent part is getting into the yoke. The yoke is meekness, yet everything in us is arrogant. The violent part is to get the yoke of meekness on. Once you are in 100 percent and you are not holding part of yourself back, you will start to experience the ease. It is being halfhearted that is difficult. I
sort of
want to be righteous, but I
sort of
want to be wicked. There is this little part of me that hates wickedness except that one little part of darkness. The battle is often fought over that final 10 percent. That is the war. That is the fight. That is the race. You have to exert some energy if you want to run this race.

T
RAINED
T
HROUGH
P
RESSURE

. . . do not despise the chastening of the L
ORD
. . . for whom the L
ORD
loves He chastens. . . . If you endure chastening, God deals with you as sons. . . . Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

—H
EBREWS
12:5–11

We are often trained through pressure. Pressure is not the only way we are fashioned, but it is one way. If you have a doctrine of God that doesn’t include trials, you will be perplexed. Sometimes God will cause pressure in your life, and sometimes He relieves it. You do not really know which it is until later when looking back. He is after an eternal you. He knows the end of the story. He knows where you are going, and He knows the best way to form and fashion you. Sometimes that is through fire, and sometimes that is through pressure. It could be emotional, physical, financial, relational, or other kinds of pain. If we have a theology of God that doesn’t include forming us through these trials, we will be offended.

Not only our personal lives but also the globe will experience great shaking at the hand of God (Hag. 2:7). He is more interested in creating you and forming and fashioning you into a meek person than He is in giving you what you think you want now (Matt. 5:5). He is doing this so that He can hand you the earth in the age to come. Remember you are a stranger here. You are going through life. You are on your way somewhere. He wants to form you and fashion you, making you ready for what He wants to give you in this age and in the age to come. If we lose sight of that, pressure is senseless and without meaning. We start to accuse Him, saying, “If You are so good, why did this happen? Where were You? If You are so powerful, why don’t You intervene?” We start to accuse God instead of seeing His hand working in the midst of our battle. There are many times that He will break in and bring a miraculous intervention that will stun us, and sometimes He won’t.

I have had cancer twice. Once when I was nineteen, and then it came back seven years later. When I was nineteen, I wanted to know God as healer. I believed that God healed. I was reading John G. Lake and all these faith preachers, and I wanted to know Him as healer for myself. I was quoting the Scripture, and I was standing on it believing with all of my heart, but guess what? God did not miraculously heal me. I was nineteen, and I had to do chemotherapy and have several surgeries. I lost my hair and the whole thing. God was after something else.

I believe we should resist the devil and fight against all manner of darkness, which includes sickness. God doesn’t cause these things, but there are times He allows them. We fight and stand, and then at the end of the day we have to look up to Him without offense and ask Him to mold our hearts in the midst of the battle. We pursue healing, provision, direction, and all of the benefits of His hand. We not only fight the fight of faith, but we must also let Him mold our hearts no matter the outcome in our circumstances.

Sometimes I get into a humanistic view of God that says His main purpose for my life is to make me healthy and happy now. As though right here, right now, I should be rich, happy, healthy, beautiful, and have everything I want. As if He owes me these things. If I think, “You are good and this is what good looks like to me,” and do not see the bigger, eternal picture or the internal working of the Potter, I will end up offended. It is as though He could say, “Really? You want Me to leave you selfish, arrogant, full of your own agenda, egocentric, and in sin? Do you really want Me to leave you in that state, because I’m ‘so good’? How about you do it My way and let Me form My love in you even if it means through pressure at times.” (See Romans 5:3–5; James 1:2–4.)

I want to trust His leadership, because He has an agenda that is not my agenda, and He is far more interested in producing humility, meekness, and compassion in me. I have so much more compassion for sick people just because I have been through a little bit of sickness. I am not suggesting that we embrace sickness. I rebuke it and believe for healing to the end. We cannot predict God. But at the end of the day we have to deal with the fact that sometimes He heals, and sometimes there is a delay in that healing. This is true in many arenas of our lives, not just physical health. He trains us through pressure.

We all have different stories. We have different realms of pressure that we do not understand. We have to define God’s goodness on His terms. He is so good that He will sometimes allow pressure to train us and press us into meekness. He is so kind and generous that there are times we get broken in order to come up humble and grateful, leaning on our beloved (Song of Sol. 8:5).

S
HAKE
I
T
O
FF AND
G
ET
B
ACK IN THE
R
ACE