Leading an Effective Life-
Perseverance

Sunday, September 23, 2007

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Thomas Edison believed that we could have light from electricity. Now this is during the time that the only light we had were gas lights both on the streets and in homes. But yet he believed we could have a light illumination by passing a current through a filament and we could have electric light, much to the chagrin of all of his contemporaries who almost made fun of him for the very concept that electricity could produce light. But yet, undeterred, Thomas Edison set out for well over a year, experiment after experiment after experiment to try to produce light from electricity. He sent his people around the world to try to find different material that would serve as a filament. He sent them to China, Japan, Burma, South America, anywhere he could think of to gather different raw materials so he could pass a current through it and to see if he could get some sort of illumination. Some 6,000 times he tried and some 6,000 times he failed.

But then, on October 21, 1879, he got the idea to take a cotton filament and to carbonize it, put it into a vacuum tube and to pass electricity through it and a light came on. Now what would have happened if Thomas Edison would have given up at 5,999? Who knows? Would we still be suffering with gas lights and many of the modern conveniences of electricity we have today, would we not be enjoying them? But because he persevered, because he pressed on, because he considered it not 6,000 failures but, as he said, it was 6,000 ways he learned how not to make a lightbulb, he kept on until the lights came on.

Henry Ford had this dream, this vision of producing a V8 engine for his cars that was affordable and that could be mass produced. To do that, it would have to come from a single cast. Well, at the time he proposed this, the only V8 engines that were around were those that were hand-built and they were extremely expensive. But he had this concept of an affordable V8 engine. So he took his concept and his drawings to his engineers. The engineers took one look at it and they said, “Mr. Ford, it will never run.” He said, “Build it anyway.” They did. It didn’t. “Keep at it,” he said. “Try again.” Six months later, they came to him. “Mr. Ford, we put a lot of money, a lot of energy into this. It is simply not going to run.” “Keep going,” Ford said. “Try again. Go back to the drawing board.” Six months later, once again, they crawled into his office. “Mr. Ford, I’m sorry. It’s not working. The engine won’t run.” “Keep going,” he said until finally, in 1932, the L-head engine hit the assembly line and the first mass produced, economical V8 engine rolled off the line. Who knows? If Ford had not persevered, if he had not pressed on, could you imagine thousands of NASCAR fans would have nothing to do on Sunday afternoons.

Perseverance. Albert Einstein once said, “It’s not that I’m so smart. I just stick with a problem longer than anyone else.” Perseverance. It’s more than patience. Perseverance is standing up under pressure. Perseverance means that you’re going to endure when times get difficult. When trouble comes your way, you don’t just toss in the towel and you give up. Perseverance is a stick-to-it-ness that says, “I’m going to keep going no matter what the circumstances might be.”

Perseverance. Because of that, many people have changed the world we live in. One could say that perseverance was a characteristic of an effective life. Is it any wonder then, in Peter’s letter, as he talks about how we are to add onto our faith that one of the characteristics he says is that of perseverance?

This is our third week in looking at 2 Peter 1 and as we learn how is it that God has in mind for us to have an effective life, that is, a life that’s meaningful, a life that has purpose, a life that at the end of the day we say is fulfilling, remember that an effective life, the basis for all of that, is our faith relationship with God, a relationship that He’s called us into. And so that means an effective life is one which is led in response to everything God has done for us. But now that God has called us into this relationship, now that God has guaranteed our salvation, now God says, “You are a new person. You are a changed person. Now live out that faith.” And that’s why Peter says, “Make every effort to add to that faith.” And there’s a progression he goes through. First of all, there’s virtue or goodness and then there is knowledge, that is, the knowledge of God’s Word and there’s self control but after self control, then it leads to this: Perseverance, endurance. It says when life throws us a curve, we’re not going to give up. When things don’t go our way, we don’t do as Job’s friends recommended in the Old Testament, curse God and die. Perseverance says we remain faithful, we stick with it, we endure.

Well, my friends, if we’re going to persevere, there are two things I believe we need to do, two things we need to keep in mind. They are similar but they have a nuance to each one of them. The first is this: Perseverance sees the benefit of going through rough times. Perseverance says, “I know I’m going to go through something tough. I’m going to go through something which is unpleasant but it sees that I’m going to come out on the other end a different person, a changed person, a better person that sees the benefit on the other side.” Let’s face it, this side of heaven, life is not always fair. This side of heaven, we’re always going to have to deal with things that are unpleasant. And God didn’t promise it any other way. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that once you become a Christian that all of a sudden now life is supposed to be rosy, one happy event after another and just a blissful existence until you finally go on to heaven. God never promised that. God said, “That’s how I originally designed it. That’s how the world was created. I created a paradise and I put humankind into it but when sin came in, the whole world fell because of that.” And since we live in a fallen world, a sinful world, that means we have problems. That means we have health issues. That means we have financial problems. That means we have difficulties. We have tragedies. We have relationships that fail. We have all kinds of things, valleys if you will, that we have to live through. That’s just a reality of living this side of heaven. Now what’s unusual, though, is we seem to be living in a world and in a time when we want to live in a state of denial, that is, we don’t want to believe that. We know it’s true but we want to do anything and everything possible so we don’t have to go through any kind of challenges, that we don’t have to go through any kind of trials or suffering. We live in a world that if something isn’t making us happy, if something isn’t working quite the way we want it to, then we move onto something else or we move onto someone else.

Dr. Greg Swenson, family counselor, writes this about marriage. He says, “The average length of marriage is only 9.4 years.” Can you believe that? We’re down to 9.4 years. He says, “One obvious reason is the cultural emphasis on self- enhancement, putting what seems best for the individual above all else.” Alright, so that’s our self-indulgent self. “If I don’t get something out of it, then it isn’t worth it.” That’s contrary to the whole concept of marriage. But he goes on and he says, “I would further suggest that marriage is falling victim to a more encompassing problem, an unwillingness to face adversity.” An unwillingness to face adversity. In other words, when couples come together in a relationship or in a marriage, as soon as things start going south, as soon as the other person isn’t making me happy like they used to, as soon as I lose that warm, fuzzy feeling each time I see them or the moment we have to go through some rough times or some troubled times or some challenges coming to the relationship, well, we just dump that relationship and think we can move onto something else. It’s all part of this disposable society we live in. After all, when your DVD player goes bad, do you go out and have it repaired? No, for the most part, we don’t, right? We don’t take it to the repair shop and have it repaired because we don’t want to deal with the hassle, the time and, frankly, it doesn’t make sense money wise to have it repaired so we throw the DVD player out and we get a new DVD player.

How many relationships have just been thrown out because we didn’t want to give it the time, didn’t want to deal with the hassle, didn’t think it was worth the expense? We have this unwillingness to go through adversity. It’s not only in relationships. I recently read that the average person will go through six career changes in their lifetime. Could that be right? Six career changes in their lifetime? Even cut that in half and say three in their lifetime. Well, after I read that, my mind started thinking and I wondered what’s the reason for that and I am sure there is a whole variety of factors that come into that scenario of six career changes but I wonder if part of it isn’t this, “That I start a job and it loses its shine after awhile. It’s not as interesting as I thought it was going to be. It just doesn’t sort of capture my attention. I’m bored at the job. Or maybe a large project comes along and it’s going to require long hours and I’m going to have to come in on the weekends or I don’t like my boss or I don’t like my coworkers so why don’t I ditch that job and I move on to something else.” I wonder if it’s happening on the other side as well. Corporations and companies. Everything comes down to the bottom line and not annually but quarter by quarter by quarter. So you don’t hit the numbers at the quarter, you don’t hit that profit margin, well, then it’s time to starting cutting people. We’ll call it a restructure. We’ll call it a paring down. Or we’ll just simply call it a firing of somebody because we won’t endure, we won’t go through the adversity of the job or we won’t wait until the next quarter or we won’t wait until the employee matures into their job. No, we simply move on. Somehow we think we can avoid tragedy, that we can avoid pain in our lives.”

Well, as the saying goes, you can run but you can’t hide. It is inevitable, my friends. We live this side of heaven and we live with difficulties. And we live with tragedies in our lives, whether it’s health problems, financial problems, work problems, school problems, relationship problems. There is a plethora of them out there. Because of the fallen world we live in and we can’t avoid them. They will always be there. God says we need to persevere, we endure. And one of the ways in which we persevere and endure is that we know when we come out on the other side, we’re going to be a different person, that a change is going to take place and we’re going to be stronger. Our life is going to be better. But we have to be able to see that.

James tells us about that in Chapter 1. James says, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of any kind because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” Or Peter’s first letter, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials, these have come so that your faith of greater worth than gold may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” Consider it pure joy? You greatly rejoice? Is God saying every time something bad happens in our life, we should throw a party? Kind of like we come from work and we say, “Honey, guess what? I lost my job today, I totaled the car on the way home and our oldest daughter has decided to become homeless and live on the streets. Let’s invite the neighbors over for a barbecue, huh?” That’s not what God is saying. God’s not saying that it’s going to be pleasant or you’re going to enjoy the valleys. But God says rejoice because of what’s going to happen to you. Rejoice about how God is going to work in you and how God is going to change you and how you’re going to become stronger than you ever thought possible, that He’s going to strengthen your relationship with other people and He’s going to strengthen your relationship with Him. In fact, you can’t get to that depth of a relationship without going through the valleys.

Dr. Swenson went on to write about marriage, “The conflict and difficulty inherent in marriage is an inevitable,” now wait, “and valuable experience, a passageway necessary to greater depths of intimacy and commitment.” A passageway necessary to greater intimacy and commitment. If you want your relationship to grow with another person, go through some tough times with that other person. Those couples that have seen tragedy in their life, that have endured something catastrophic in their life, if they’ve gone through it together and gone through it with faith in God, they come out on the other side with a rock solid relationship. I wonder how many marriages, how many couples have not really experienced the true joy of marriage, the true blessing of marriage because they duck out when adversity comes. Instead of knowing it’s through that adversity the relationship really gets grounded, it’s through adversity all of a sudden the intimacy and the commitment to one another really forms a solid bond.

It’s the same thing with God, is it not? When are you closest to God? Is it when everything is just going great, smooth sailing? Is that when you’re praying the most? For most of us, it’s not. For most of us, when we go through the challenges of life, when something is happening that is out of our control, until we finally look up to God and say, “I don’t know what else to do, God,” and all of a sudden, you’re putting all of your hopes and all of your trust in Him. Perseverance says I’m going to see through the valley because when I come out on the other end, I’m going to be a stronger individual. God is really going to fortify me. Strengthen my relationships, both with other people but also with Him.

Perseverance also requires that we keep our eyes on the goal. What I mean by that is we keep our eyes on the fact that whatever we’re going through isn’t going to last forever. Not only do we see the benefit but we have to believe that this will not go on for an eternity because if we can’t keep our eye on the goal, if we can’t keep our eye on the fact that this will end some day, one day, I don’t know how we can ever endure through some of the rough times we have to go through in our lives. We have to see the goal.

It was on July 4, 1952, Florence Chadwick decided she was going to be the first woman to swim from Catalina Island to the coast of California. So early that morning, she jumped into the icy cold water and she began to swim. Well, about half way through, a thick fog descended down upon the water. Couldn’t see in front of her. Fifteen hours into the race, finally she gave up exhausted, climbed into the boat only to find out that the shore was just a half a mile away. In an interview afterwards, she said, “I’m not making any kind of excuses but if I could have seen land, I would have made it.” If I would have seen land, I’d have made it.

If you can’t see the end, if you can’t see the goal, you’re liable to give up. How can you just endure forever? But when you see that there’s an end, that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s not a train, then you know I can make it. Hebrews 12 says this, “And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of God.” Jesus saw the goal because Jesus had to endure. He had to endure becoming a human being. He had to endure the cross. He had to endure having all of our sins placed upon Him so He would make the payment for that. How did He endure all of that? Because for the joy set before Him. The joy is He was earning salvation for all of mankind. The joy was that He was going to see you in heaven one day, He was going to see you in paradise, I was going to be with Him for an eternity. Having that joy before Him, knowing what the goal was, He endured the cross. He scorned the shame of the cross so we could be with Him. He kept His eye on the goal.

You and I need to keep our eye on the goal. We need to keep our eye on the fact that it’s not going to last forever. If we focus in on whatever it is we’re trying to deal with, that’s just self-defeating. If you’re dealing with a health issue, if all you’re thinking about is how bad you feel, as real as that is, and if all you’re thinking about is all the things that are going wrong in your body, how could you ever endure something like that? But if you focus in on the fact that someday I’m going to feel better. One day I’m going to have my strength back.” And every victory, no matter how small it is, that’s a great encouragement for you. Then you can endure. You see an end in sight.

If you have a class at school that you just can’t stand the teacher, okay, think about next semester. Think about next year. If you’re in a job that you really don’t like that your boss drives you nuts, you think about the fact that maybe he’ll get transferred, maybe you’ll switch departments, maybe you will get another job. But you don’t focus on the thing in front of you. If you have financial problems in your household, you don’t think about all the things that you can’t afford. You think about all the things God has given to you and how much more you will appreciate them when you’re back on your feet again. You keep your eye on the goal, the end that’s in sight.

And you keep you eye on the ultimate goal. Scripture says, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.” Because let’s be honest here. There are some things you’re going to have to deal with that will not end this side of heaven. It’s just a fact. We all know that. There are some sicknesses, there are some diseases, there are some relationships that are broken, there are some things that this side of heaven will never get fixed. Just simply won’t. You’re going to have to endure it until the day you leave this earth. Well, how do you endure that? How do you persevere? Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. The Jesus who says I endured the cross for you. I scorned its shame so you could spend an eternity with me. How does an eternity compare to the amount of years we have in this world? It doesn’t. He says, “Someday you’ll be with me in heaven.” In heaven, my friends, there are no troubles. There are no challenges. There are no valleys. There is no sickness. There is no sorrow. There is no frustration. There is no stress. There are no worries. There is only a peace and a joy that you and I frankly can’t even comprehend. We keep our eyes on the goal. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. God says we can persevere, we can endure. We remember the benefit that how God is going to work in our life, that He can take the worst situation and make it the best thing that ever happened to us. We keep our eye on the goal, that no matter what it is, it won’t last forever. It doesn’t last an eternity. There is an end in sight. And we do endure. We do persevere and I dare say we do lead an effective life. Amen.

Copyright 2007 Gloria Dei Lutheran Church