Key Component I

Heb.12:⁷ [NIV] “Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?”

The first bedrock of character is Courage. A burst of courage for fifteen minutes or even a whole day, is good but it is not enough to carry you through. It takes endurance to sustain courage. For instance warfare [battle], while it takes courage to engage, but it is not courage that will sustain you for the duration of the war. No matter how courageous you are in the beginning, it is endurance that takes you through the battle till you get the victory. In this battle of life, we that are children of God have to learn to endure until the end and God will help us, in Jesus Name. Endurance sustains courage.

The second bedrock of character is Discipline. It is important to understand delayed gratification and to make advance decisions. But it takes endurance to give staying power to discipline. If you do not endure hardship, if you do not endure the training, your discipline will go out of the window after a while. Your discipline is actually tested by your endurance and you need to get this. The more you endure, the more it shows exactly how disciplined you are.

The third bedrock of character is Vision. It is endurance that turns your vision into reality because your vision will be tested. You say you have a vision to do something? Great, you have to endure to birth that vision. Habakkuk says that you should wait because the vision is yet for an appointed time. That waiting is enduring until the time that the vision turns into a reality. Without endurance, vision is nothing but wishful thinking. No matter what you are going through, do not quit on your vision.

A lot of people quit [give up] too easily because they want instant gratification and cannot endure the waiting period. Such “instant people” in the face of the small test will give up. You have to determine not to quit. Quitting does not develop character. Like they say, winners never quit and quitters never win. Nobody celebrates a quitter. It is the people that pay the price in endurance that are remembered. You will endure in Jesus Name.

Prayer: Holy Spirit, I ask for the grace to endure in battle, for staying power, and to wait on God till He puts in my hands the vision He has put in my heart, in Jesus Name. Amen!