Drollinger: Paul's Pillars of Perseverance Can Strengthen You in the Darkest of Times
As a believer, every day you grapple with monumental issues, work long hours and do your best to make good decisions. You have a difficult job. But overall, Paul had it much worse than you do.
He was shipwrecked, imprisoned, mocked, beaten with rods, stoned, betrayed and deprived of food, sleep and shelter, yet he persevered.
This week’s Bible study, “Four Pillars of Paul’s Perseverance,” peers into Paul’s mind on how to overcome adversities. I think you’ll find it fascinating, arresting, quite helpful and, as I am praying, also encouraging.
Every believer is called by Christ to a purpose. What may look to you like defeats may be a part of His divine plan.
The first pillar of Paul’s perseverance has to do with his clear sense of his calling for the task at hand. Absent this, when the going gets tough, anyone will begin to doubt God’s will for his life. If the calling is settled beforehand, however, it never becomes a matter of internal questioning.
Perseverance begins with clarity in your calling — acknowledging with confidence that God has you here for His purposes! This is His life assignment for you, not your own.
For Paul, conversion was perhaps an easier matter than for others because he was personally confronted by the second member of the Trinity three times in the book of Acts.
Notice his conversion in Acts 9:15 after Jesus blinded Paul (before his conversion his name was Saul) on the road to Damascus: “But the Lord said to [Ananias], ‘Go, for [Saul] is a chosen instrument of Mine, to bear My name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel.’”
In this passage, Jesus sends a messenger to explain to Saul why he had been blinded. This temporary blindness was an unmistakable event he’d never forget!
For us today, the situation is most likely different. Short of Jesus calling you personally as in Acts 9:15, it is a matter of faith to believe what Paul says about God’s perspective of your conversion. Paul says Jesus has personally called every believer!
Note the following passages in this regard: “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (Ephesians 1:4-5).
Ephesians 2:10, flowing from the truths of Ephesians 1, drives home the clarity of every believer’s calling in Christ: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”
Accordingly, believers must know with confidence, based on what the Bible says, that they won neither election nor appointment by chance, but by the sovereign will and act and God.
You must have confidence in these biblical truths and trust them to be true in order to have sustaining perseverance when times get tough. Acknowledge your calling as it is clearly stated. For certain, Paul did that, and it was a pillar of his perseverance, his soldiering on during the tough times.
The second pillar relates to the words Paul uses to describe himself while in God’s service. Each serves to reveal Paul’s inner attitude about himself and provides insights into what compelled him and undergirded his forbearance in ministry.
In Ephesians 3:8, Paul reveals an attitude of compelling humility. He says he is the very least of all the saints and that all he was enabled to do came not from himself but from God’s grace.
The same attitude is revealed in other words in 1 Timothy 1:15, wherein Paul states to his understudy Timothy that he, Paul, is the most undeserving of people: “It is a trustworthy statement, deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost of all.”
This attitude of personal humility, or lack of pride, is the basis of his ability to proclaim to the believers in the church of Galatia the following related inner attitude: “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me” (Galatians 2:20).
Theologians refer to this as the “exchanged life.” Paul realized that nothing good dwelled in his sinful self — that everything good that could possibly flow from his life was related to God’s living in him and doing things through him. If the believer is dead to self to start with, then nothing that goes bad along the way will kill him.
The third pillar of Pauline perseverance relates to how Paul viewed others. Empirical studies show that most people act according to how they think others will perceive their actions. If that is what motivates a person, he will inevitably lack courage and perseverance when others criticize him.
On the contrary, Paul states in several passages that he viewed God as his audience, not man. In Galatians 1:10, he states dramatically why he possessed elephant skin: “For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? Or am I striving to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond servant of Christ.”
The fourth pillar is yet another theological perspective that impelled Paul — one that reveals his profound understanding of one of the sweeping themes of Scripture!
God the Father desires to award God the Son with a gift for going to the cross. That gift is a pure and undefiled church, the saints of yesterday and today who have no wrinkle, spot or blemish.
The apostle’s understanding of the scope of this truth and his part in it was undoubtedly motivational. Notice what he says about the believer’s judgment in 2 Corinthians 5:10 and how that profound truth proves motivational to a life of pleasing God: “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10).
In fact, on the future day of judgment, every believer will be rewarded based on his faithfulness.
Paul possessed a multifaceted theological construct that created a passionate perseverance to achieve God’s purposes in his life! The degree to which we understand Paul is the degree to which we can be empowered to stay the course and soldier on — even in the most difficult of times.
May God grant us to become more like Him who endured even the cross. Amen.
Click here to read the full study.
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