Persevere, Believer!

"Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,  

 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect
and complete, lacking in nothing."  (James 1:2-4)

In his comment on a Koine Greek translation, William "Bill" Mounce made the following comments recently concerning James 1:4...

"The reason we must be patient with the maturing process is that perseverance must finish its task if in fact we are going to be perfect and complete ... If we are to be spiritually mature, then perseverance must complete its work. If it doesn’t, if we don’t embrace the pain but run from it, it can’t complete its God-given task .... It is like you are stuck in the middle of the road, cars coming and going both directions, and all you want to do is get out of the road.  All you want to do is make the pain go away.  You want to run away.  But God calls us to persevere, to hang in there, to lean into the pain, to sit in the middle of the road even though it feels like your life is being threatened every day.  And then someday, as we lean into the pain, as we cry out to God, as we choose to persevere in our faith and lean into the pain, as we stay in the middle of the road, we realize that we are growing into spiritual maturity, and some day God calls us to leave the middle of the road and come to the other side, perfect and complete, lacking nothing."

[His complete blog post can be read here.]