Proverbs 24.10, 16
“If you faint in the day of adversity, your strength is small … the righteous falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble in times of calamity.
It’s an inescapable reality: Life will knock you down. When that happens, your job is to trust God and get back up. Repeatedly. Relentlessly.
Unfortunately, many people today give up too easily. When it gets uncomfortable or difficult, some people are tempted to compromise, and then quit. They give in to mediocrity and give up to defeat. This is not the way of the kingdom of God. When the Christian faith is rightly lived, it is tenaciously persistent. It is relentless.
This doesn’t mean that we make no mistakes. Indeed, the proverb makes it clear that the righteous fall down. But they don’t stay down. They get back up again and again. It’s about perseverance, not perfection.
The decision to start is relatively easy. But once you’ve started, it’s the decision to keep going that matters most. It’s about the many “re-commitments” that are necessary to sustain the journey when it gets difficult, tedious, and painful. The beginning requires an “initiating commitment,” but to keep going over the long term requires many “sustaining commitments.” It is saying “I will” when it gets hard.
I love what the first chapter of James says: “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1.2-4)
The word that James uses for “steadfastness” is hupomone, which can also be translated “endurance” or “perseverance.” It literally means “to bear up under.” The idea is this: Keep going. No matter how hard it gets — no matter the pain, difficulty, or darkness — don’t quit. Stay the course. Bear the burden and never give up.
Belief is the critical factor. The reason why deeply committed Christians are relentless? The reason they never give up? They trust God. They know who he is, and they have responded to his call on their life. They have accepted the mission that God has assigned to them: live and work in the midst of a fallen and broken world, and do so in a way that reflects the reality of God’s love and lordship.
To achieve anything great in life, you must be tenaciously persistent. You must be relentless. Examine any significant achievement in human history, and you will find people, teams, and organizations who did what was necessary, when it was necessary, for as long as necessary. And they endured and overcame adversity along the way.
This very point is made in Urban Meyer’s book Above the Line: “Every team faces some kind of adversity. Mediocre teams are destroyed by it. Good teams survive it. Great teams get better because of it.”
God has designed a world where the “secret” to success isn’t a secret. It’s a discipline: The cumulative impact of discipline-driven action repeated over time. And since there is enormous power in persistence, it is no surprise that the evil one is “the god of giving up.” Satan is the source of the quitting voice.
Do not listen to the god of giving up. Do not listen to the quitting voice. Listen to the voice of the God who loves you and calls you, and be relentless.
Yes, sometimes it is tedious, boring, and uncomfortable. Sometimes it is a grind, even for long stretches. But the very nature of faith-driven hupomone is that it endures and persists through the grind. It actually thrives and gets better in the grind.
Let us trust our God, align our personal and professional goals with his Word, and pursue those goals with relentless perseverance. When you get knocked down, get up and keep going.
“Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-14)
