Perseverance

It's kind of an overused word in some circles, and yet underutilized and underdeveloped in most places.

What does it mean to persevere? To persevere in prayer, to persevere in joy, to persevere in patience, to persevere in waiting, to persevere with people?

Today on 8/3/19, I'm not pregnant. It hasn't happened yet. But oddly, I feel closer to the fruition of God's promise to me of you, N., then ever before...

There is a peace that truly transcends understanding. An assurance that even as I look ahead without any inclination of when this will happen for us, I trust that God is a promise-keeper.

Perseverance.

Perhaps in this season, this is what it means to persevere with God. To walk with Him without a map or spiritual GPS. To persevere, even when I don't understand Him or His ways. To persevere in spending time with Him and communing with Him even when I don't see.

I think perseverance isn't talked about alot because it involves pain. To persevere means to push past our emotions and tap into the invisible, the less-praised thing, the less obvious thing, the treasure in secret, dark and inconvenient places.

Perseverance means so much to me this season because it frames the way of my days. To persevere with my Jesus and praise Him in the not yet places. To persevere as I am being made adequate.

It also means alot to me as I walk with my precious brothers and sisters on the streets of Skid Row.

On 8/1, I started on our street medicine team in Skid Row.

What does it mean to persevere when 4,000 people live in a concentrated area, ridden with evil, ridden with suffering, ridden with hopelessness, drugs, sexual abuse, poverty, sorrow, addiction, mental illness, loneliness, disease?

How does Jesus persevere each and every day with these ones? And how can I do so in my limited capacity to love, hope and be present?

How do I persevere in hope when I see men cooking meth on the ground and injecting themselves in broad daylight? When I see women prostituting in bathrooms for money or drugs?

How do we persevere in the midst of impossibility?

I don't think it means we put aside impossibility and look for what's possible. No. I think we become well-acquainted with impossibility. It becomes home for us. And as we make our home in impossibility, we find God there. We find Jesus in the midst of impossibility and He walks us out into His possibility.

So perseverance means facing impossibility face-to-face, head on, without reserve. Going all into impossibility and finding that God is in the midst of every impossibility. He is well-acquainted with impossibility. Because in Him, in Christ:

Nothing is impossible.

N., may you know this each and every day. May you be a seeker of impossible things. May you hope for the impossible, may you leap into the unknown, knowing that Jesus is more than enough to catch you. May you know that the most exciting thing about following Jesus is this:

In Him, nothing will ever be impossible.