Introduction: What do you think about when you think about perseverance?
- Me: persevering through 8 long months without LOST
- Others (more seriously)
- persevering through uncertainty (unknown job statuses)
- persevering through a bad start (is this really God's work if it stalled out? stopping food pantries and clothing banks because of a bad start, etc.)
- persevering through trial (Haiti earthquake survivors)
- Joseph faced numerous trials that created uncertainty: tossed in a well; sold into slavery; working in a strange land; false accusations; tossed into jail; forgotten in jail; negotiating Egyptian politics as a ruler.
- He recognized through all this uncertainty that God meant it for good.
- Perseverance enables us know certainty even during uncertainty. Genesis 50:20.
- When Moses first challenged Pharaoh, Pharaoh responded by making the work harder for the Jews.
- When Moses finally freed the people, they ended up wandering in a desert for 40 years before they received the promised land.
- Perseverance enables us to finish strong.
- James knew that we all face different things that test our faith.
- We only grow by facing these tests head on and persevering through them.
- Perseverance enables us to mature in faith and become complete.
- We progress through perseverance
- Where are you?--uncertainty, bad start, trials?
- How do you persevere? Focus not on the trial but on what is being done in you. [counter-intuitive]
- Do not focus on the uncertainty, the slow start, or the trial. Focus on what God is doing in you.
