On your journey to fulfilling purpose and destiny, you will experience your fair share of adversity. No one is exempt from it, you will suffer, you will be tempted and you will make mistakes. You will also learn for yourself what every great achiever has learned, that through overcoming challenges come growth and strength.
There’s a popular saying that goes thus: when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. You must understand that it is your response to adversity, not the adversity itself that will determine how your life’s story will develop. You will have your moments of deep discouragement, where you will need to go to God in prayer with tears in your eyes and ask Him to help you. Through all of these sometimes very necessary, but painful experiences, you must find a way to develop the intestinal fortitude to persevere and keep keeping on.
Know that God will not permit any troubles to come upon you unless he has a grand plan, through which great blessings will come out of the difficulty.
With this at the back of your mind, cultivate your perseverance.
From experience, I can tell you for a fact that almost all of your life’s triumphs will stem from your ability to persevere and forge ahead in the midst of challenging situations.
To perseveré means to keep on in spite of difficulties. It means to continue a course of action, even in the face of obstacles or in the midst of little or no prospects of success.
Perseverance is the ability to persist and be patient in anything undertaken. It is to maintain purpose in spite of challenges, obstacles or discouragement. It is to continue steadfastly until you achieve your goals.
The temptation to give up when things are not going the way we want is common to all men.
I read once that many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. It is the lack of the ability and capacity to persevere that causes many people to quit well short of the finish line. And that’s why Hebrews 12:1-2 admonishes:
therefore then since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses who have borne testimony to the truth, let us strip off and throw aside, every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily clings to and entangles us. And let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us.
Let me remind you that whether we are up or down, life goes on. Therefore we too must learn to be tough and keep going when the going gets tough.
Perseverance is a necessary ingredient for achieving greatness.