Learning Endurance

Endurance is not always some surprise trial, sent by God to test us. It is learning how to live, when you do not see what the future will look like.

It is a faith that is not fed by feeling, but in all believing, knowing that His Grace is sufficient for this day.

When Endurance begins to call our name, it is saying to our hearts...its time for your love to go deeper. 

Its time for sorrow to do its plowing in your heart, to make room for love that only pain can make room for.

The problem with pain, is that we just do not want or welcome it.  

And all who choose to shut their hearts up to it, live shallow lives, casting blame in the shadows (ie past or people), for their difficulties.

The beautiful thing about those who see endurance as just part of growing in HOPE...they do not measure HARD things, as bad things.  

It becomes, what I call, a Painful Joy.

At the time period of the above picture
(Anna had just been released from the hospital after nearly a month in ICU...she could barely lift her head up because of all the med's they had her on), I did count HARD, as BAD...because my love was more SELF focused.  How the HARD effected me, not what He was after in my Heart.

 My LONG-suffering Heavenly Father...taught me different.


We grow weary, when we place time limits on our trials. Seek to REMEMBER, Who is with you, instead of Wondering When the struggle will be over

...strength will come. 

We are people with ENDS, bumped up to a God WHO never ends...He does not view TIME, like we do.

My own experience of calling out, when I was needy, taught me much hope.

TIME and time again, what once seemed insurmountable, proved to be small next to a Grace that had no end to it.


 A Grace that was more than enough, for the day it was given.

Sometimes, endurance was as simple as the next step. 


“It takes Almighty grace to take the next step when there is no vision and no spectator – the next step in devotion, the next step in your study, in your reading, in your kitchen; the next step in your duty, when there is no vision from God, no enthusiasm and no spectator. It takes far more of the grace of God, far more conscious drawing upon God to take that step, then it does to preach the Gospel.” ~Oswald Chambers

"The only way to learn strong faith is to endure great trials."~George Muller

"We are always in the forge, or on the anvil; by trials God is shaping us for higher things."  ~Henry Ward Beecher

Also....this is the pathway to A Profound Rest

Simple or Complicated?

Jesus said "If your eye is single your whole body will be full of light" and then added "If the light in you is darkness how great is that darkness". 

When our eye is "single" - God's way are "simple" -- "un-complicated". 

We see Him as good, and His word as a treasure of wisdom given to us through His kindness. 

When our eye is "single" we see His yoke as easy and His burden as light and we experience His rest for our soul. 

When our eye is "single" we delight to do His will. 

When our eye is single - OUR HEART IS PURE and we SEE GOD. If the light in us is darkness, God appears very complicated. 

If we see Him in a "bad light", we perceive His ways as difficult. 

When the light in us is darkness, God's ways seem hard, confusing, and "complicated." 

How do we see Him? The mind of the Spirit who "EN-LIGHTENS" us is life and peace. The mind of the flesh is not single but complicatedly "hostile", it can't submit because it is IMPURE. 

Sin has "complicated" the carnal mind's perception of God. 

The pure in heart see God as pure - in fact to the pure ALL THINGS are pure - because their eye is "single" - life is not complicated - it's just a joy filled relationship with a perfect heavenly Father. They know that the trouble in the world is not His fault, He is the answer - not the problem.
(text Alan sent out)

Timing and Trust

His Hands are big. He can handle what we can not.  

Trust simply means...letting HIM.

Our Heavenly Father "withholds" information from His child 

because its better in His Hands than ours.  He "holds - 

with" care, for the right time. In due season. While we wait, we are 

tested...will we trade trust for knowledge, like Thomas? 

Unless I see and touch? We are more ready to move, than be still 

and listen.We want more control, rather than to let Him lead. To 

Have knowledge, rather than to Hold Trust.

It is a glorious thing to get to know God in a new way in the inner chamber. It is something still greater and more glorious to know God as the all-sufficient One and to wait on His Spirit to open our hearts and minds wide to receive the great things, the new things which He really longs to bestow on those who wait for Him. 

~Andrew Murray

Those who complain that they make no progress in the life of prayer because they "cannot meditate" should examine, not their capacity for meditation, but their capacity for suffering and love. For there is a hard and costly element, a deep seriousness, a crucial choice, in all genuine religion. ~Evelyn Underhill