Lies We Are Told About God — Pt 16

What is the dif­fe­rence bet­ween Per­se­ve­rance and Patience?

Let’s throw the word Endu­rance in the mix to help with our understanding.

Per­se­ve­rance as “steady per­sis­tence in adhe­ring to a course of action, a belief, or a pur­pose; stead­fast­ness.”  It defi­nes endu­rance as “the act, qua­lity, or power of withs­tan­ding hardship or stress,” but in the second defi­ni­tion it defi­nes endu­rance as “the state or act of per­se­ve­ring.”  While they are synonyms and each word carries in it the idea of “con­ti­nuance,” per­se­ve­rance lays stress on a given course of action in the face of dif­fi­culty or oppo­si­tion.    Endu­rance perhaps more strongly adds the idea of con­ti­nuing under resis­tance or the adver­si­ties of life, to carry on in spite of hardships as “endure an Arc­tic win­ter.”        Patience refers to the qua­lity of endu­ring pain, hardship, pro­vo­ca­tion, or anno­yance with calm­ness.  In addi­tion, patience can inc­lude the calm willing­ness to tole­rate delay.  In the New Tes­ta­ment, howe­ver, the Greek word usually trans­la­ted patience is more often asso­cia­ted with patience with peo­ple and the endu­rance or per­se­ve­rance with con­di­tions, cir­cums­tan­ces, and purposes.

Love requi­res that one Per­se­vere in strug­gles in a given situa­tion or cir­cums­tance and pos­sibly, express Patience towards the other par­ties within that struggle

Scrip­ture uses seve­ral dif­fe­rent Greek words that are trans­la­ted per­se­ve­rance, endu­rance and patience.  I will not delve into this here but encou­rage you to read the follo­wing article that dives dee­per into the Greek study.

Love is not love until it is tested.

It can look like love, smell like love, taste like love but it is only a mirage until it is tes­ted.  It is how love is pro­ved and refi­ned in the fire. Tes­ting is the only way to deter­mine if Love can sur­vive, thrive, and grow.   Love is use­less and dor­mant, without pur­pose or func­tion, unless it is tes­ted.  Real love does not run from tes­ting but embra­ces it.   The very pur­pose of Love is to per­se­vere and hold on in the midst of trials. Anyone can love in the good times. For you married folks remem­ber the vows:  to have and to hold, from this day for­ward, for bet­ter, for worse, for richer, for poo­rer, in sick­ness and in health, until death us do part. There will be hard times in your marriage so don’t act sur­pri­sed when it happens.…learn to persevere.

Embra­cing Conflict.

Kno­wing that love must be tes­ted implies that our love will be cha­llen­ged.  In that cha­llenge comes con­flict.  We must embrace such cir­cums­tan­ces.  This does not mean that one enjoys con­flict, relishes con­flict, or even seeks it or pro­vo­kes it.  It means that we ack­now­ledge con­flict as a sign of something unre­sol­ved in the love rela­tionship.  It means that we are still gro­wing and that growth requi­res resistance.

Con­si­der weight­lif­ting.  Muscle tis­sue will not gain strength (endu­rance) unless it is pushed and pulled to the brink of fai­lure.   Then comes a reco­very period follo­wed again by resis­tance.  By cyc­ling from resis­tance to reco­very and back again, we begin to see that we are now pushing more weight.  We have become stron­ger thus we are able to take on lar­ger challenges

Something that is not exer­ci­sed begins to atrophy.  It grows weak and flac­cid as muscle tis­sues is lost and endu­rance sub­si­dies.  Con­flict makes us stron­ger if we manage it correctly.  Mana­ging it correctly is key.

Some theo­lo­gi­cal circ­les teach that truly spi­ri­tual peo­ple never expe­rience adver­sity, oppo­si­tion, or dis­cou­ra­ge­ment.  While beyond the intent of this post such teaching is not remo­tely Bibli­cal.  Adver­sity is requi­red for Per­se­ve­rance. Resis­tance is requi­red for Growth.

Per­se­ve­rance can­not be faked, at least for long.

Per­se­ve­rance is the coa­les­cence of the love-qualities of 1 Cor 13. This is the one and only ele­ment of love that CANNOT be faked.  You can fake patience and kind­ness and honor.  You can act like you trust and pro­tect.  You can say you don’t keep a record of wrongs kno­wing that you really do.  Per­se­ve­rance will become evi­dent over time because Love will Per­se­vere or it will melt away.

A great many Chris­tians fail this test in the area of their rela­tionships.  How many times have we simply wal­ked away from rela­tionships ins­tead and stic­king it out in the hard times?  “Well, they offen­ded me so screw’em”.  Yet we fail to go to them honestly to say, “you offen­ded me”.  And if they do, we fail to simply and sin­ce­rely apo­lo­gize. Ins­tead we get defen­sive an usually reveal that we are kee­ping a record of wrongs.  Life is bet­ter is we don’t keep score.  Deal with it and move on so the rela­tionship can be preserved.

We see churches split because love does not per­se­vere.  Most result from self-centered actions on one (or both sides) of the rela­tionship.  How does the world look at Chris­tians when we say ‘God Loves You and so do I’ but our actions prove other­wise?  I think we have been rightly jud­ged as Pha­ri­sees and hypoc­ri­tes; as judg­men­tal, as unlo­ving as actions speak so much lou­der than words.

When our lives are no dif­fe­rent than those who do not claim to know Christ, we have mis­sed something core to the faith.  I am not thro­wing rocks at anyone but…when divorce sta­tis­tics and addic­tion sta­tis­tics of Chris­tians mirror those of the world then we are mis­sing something about Love…namely, God’s love towards us and our love towards others.   When we live as Posers and try to ‘look’ like something we are not, we are not doing them or our­sel­ves any favors.   Do you rea­lize that peo­ple need to know that Chris­tians are just as real as they are?  That we have strug­gles, fai­lu­res, beset­ting sins and addic­tions.  The only dif­fe­rence is that we have a Hope and that without the Hope life is worth­less and futile.

The Foun­da­tion of Love is Death

You must die to your­self if you are to endure in your rela­tionships.  The power of endu­rance and per­se­ve­rance comes alive when you are in it for someone else.   And the only way to pos­sess it is when the rela­tionship is not about you.   Death to self is the essence of heart con­nec­tion.  Only then can we see authen­tic rela­tionships.  This is the Bibli­cal para­dox of giving up our life to find it.

This foun­da­tion was built by God and the only way to know the truth about God’s limit­less per­se­ve­rance is to accept His grace and turn from law-minded thin­king.  When we accept that Christ died for us, while yet sin­ners, then everything chan­ges.  Christ went thru the fire and per­se­ve­red unto death to do away with a legal rela­tionship built on The Law of “do’s and don’ts and replace it with a rela­tionship built on a heart connection.

Conc­lu­sion

Perseverance/Endurance AND Patience give us the capa­city to put one foot in front of the other each day with joyous, hope-filled, and loving deter­mi­na­tion in spite of disap­point­ments, rejec­tion, per­se­cu­tion, and other pres­su­res that might cause us to throw in the towel.  These qua­li­ties give us a willing­ness and capa­city to con­ti­nue on because our hope is fixed on God as the One who is com­pas­sio­nate and mer­ci­ful to us, and on God’s pur­po­ses and promises.