A CHALLENGE FOR THE END AND START OF YEAR

Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us....Hebrews 12:1

"Keep on keeping on" .Those words are critical to success in life and in our Christian life. The biblical word is endurance or perseverance--the ability to keep on doing the things you have committed yourself to doing when you feel like it, and even when you don't. Nothing is more essential to success in our Christian life than perseverace. Faith gets us started; perseverance keeps us going.

Perseverance is so important to the Christian life that in James 1 it tells us that above all other human traits, perseverance is the characteristic that God is trying to build into our lives. The ability to keep on going. Keep making and keeping the commitments of life.

It's easy to start the race. All kinds of people get up in the morning and put their jogging suit on and begin to run. But when the miles click past and the muscles start to tire and life isn't easy anymore, what do they do? What do you do?

It's easy to put on a white dress or a tuxedo and get to the front of the church; everybody knows that. But to have a happening marriage--not for five--but for 15 or 40 years, that takes perseverance!

It's easy to conceive a child and, by comparison, it's easy to give birth to a child, but to keep on training and raising those kids day in and day out, following through on what you have said and taught--that takes commitment!

It's easy to pray a prayer and walk an aisle; it's easy to confess faith in Christ. But to keep on following Christ--even when the pressure is on--that takes perseverance. "My brothers, consider it pure joy when you fall into various trials knowing that the trying of your faith produces perseverance."

Perseverance! Did you know that if God could get that one thing into our life, He could give us everything else? James 1 goes on to say, "But let perseverance have its perfect work that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing" (v.4.)

As you look back on 2008, how was your year? If your year was like mine, you can see some pretty significant peaks and valleys. Praise God for them. Praise God that at this year's end, we can stand before Him in faith and humility and say, "No matter what is behind me, I finish strong in Christ." Like the apostle Paul in Philippians 3: 13-14 "but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus" and so I press on, I keep on keeping on--that's perseverance.

Looking ahead to 2009, we don't know what the year will bring, but we can be sure of this, God is in control, He is faithful, His mercies will be new every morning of every day of the new year. You have power in the day when you start it with faith in God and a commitment to perseverance.

Happy New Year everyone and May God Bless.