Become More in '24 - Perserverance (North OC)

We're on this lesson of becoming more in twenty-four.

This is definitely a Marcel thing.

Don't gimme credit for that at all.

That is all Marcel.

But I appreciate the sentiment of what's behind it.

It's, we should always be striving to be more than what we are.

It's this look at, I think this clicker works or not.

Technology's amazing, especially when it doesn't work.

It's working.

This is a green button.

This should go, oh, look at that.

Okay.

There we go.

So we're going through two Peter one.

In case you haven't been following along, uh, we've been staying in

this scripture and, and I like doing a deeper dive in the scripture.

To go word by word to get a, a greater perspective of what in this

case, Peter was trying to tell us.

And we've been under the, the guise of God's empowerment and our human effort

and how it joins together to transform us to become more in twenty-four.

Today we're gonna be talking about perseverance.

Boy, there's a good word, uh, and a word that we typically don't like.

Because perseverance means challenges, perseverance means difficulties.

And I was thinking about the last time I was up here.

I did persecution right before, uh, Christmas, and now I got perseverance

and I thought, man, I'm the fun preacher.

Uh, perseverance, persecution.

But believe me, this word is all over the Bible.

Uh, and we're gonna see that a bit today.

So this is our main text in two Peter one, three through five.

It reads, his divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life

through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.

Through these, he's given us his very great and precious promises,

so that through them you may participate in the divine nature.

Having escaped the corruption of the world caused by evil desires for this

very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness, and to goodness

knowledge and to knowledge self-control.

And to self-control, perseverance, and the perseverance, godliness and the godliness.

Mutual affection, and a mutual affection.

Love.

So this has been our main text and I, and I wanna, before we get into

perseverance, I want to break down a little bit of his divine nature.

God's divine power, and this idea of making every effort.

So when you look at those words, you had goodness, knowledge,

self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection, and love.

That it's God's divine nature.

That's who God is.

God is faithful.

When we're not faithful, God is good.

When we're not good, God is knowledgeable and we can trust in his wisdom.

God has self-control because there's been multiple times where God says, I

would wipe you out, but I'm not going to.

God is perseverant with us.

He's obviously godly and he's loving, and this is in stark contrast.

To our nature, which Paul defines as this.

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in

which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world.

All of us who lived among them at one time gratifying the cravings

of our flesh and following his desires and thoughts like the rest.

We were by nature deserving of wrath.

What a stark contract.

Black and white in the sense of just God's divine nature and our nature.

We are so different from this by who we are, and I know we live in a time where

it's like you're a good person and I'm a good person, and maybe from the outside

eyes, sometimes we can appear that way.

But if someone was to dissect my heart and my mind and see what goes on inside there.

They would go, oh yeah, Eric's, definitely deserving of wrath

because that's my nature.

The craving of my flesh and the desires that I want to carry out with that.

It's who I am.

But the hope that we have is this divine nature.

Because God's divine power works with our making every effort to help

transform us to his divine nature.

That's what second Peter's talking about is that we can have this

nature, but we have to make every effort we have to do our part.

And this is probably one of the hardest things about being a

Christian, is recognizing our lane.

'cause sometimes we wanna jump into God's lane and we wanna

do what God is supposed to do.

We're gonna take over, we're gonna make this happen.

And God's like, no, you get in your lane, you make every effort,

but I'll make this happen.

And we can be transformed into his divine nature.

I also wanna look at this word, perseverance.

Huponone is what you say in Greek.

It stands for steadfastness, constancy, and endurance.

These are all nice big words.

So I thought I would go with an English translation of this, and it means

continued effort to do or achieve something despite difficulties.

Failure or opposition, the action or condition or instance of persevering.

And I was laughing at myself right now 'cause I realized the

first thing I focused on, and even what I highlighted was despite

difficulties, failure, opposition, I didn't highlight, achieve something.

'cause that's not how I think about perseverance.

When I think perseverance, I don't think about what I'm gonna achieve.

I think about difficulties, opposition, hardship, struggle.

That's perseverance.

It's like, man, this, that's exciting.

On a Sunday morning, I'm here with my family, all excited to worship God

and I gotta go through difficulties.

Failure, opposition.

Why would I want to be a Christian?

Why would I want to go through this in the same way we love

God because he first loved us.

We persevere 'cause God perseveres with us.

Romans eight.

It says, for I'm convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,

neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor death,

nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of

God that is in Christ Jesus the Lord.

Notice it doesn't say, it won't separate in the sense that our love

from God, it's God's love to us.

None of these things is gonna stop God's love for us.

God's gonna persevere in his love for us.

And when I read this, sometimes I can feel like, yeah, but what

are really God's obstacles?

God's all-powerful.

Is it really that difficult for him?

You know, what's his greatest obstacle?

And I realized his greatest obstacle is us.

We are the greatest obstacle.

For God's love 'cause God has to really persevere with us.

I was reading a Nehemiah, and Nehemiah was describing the

Israelites, and Nehemiah said this.

It says they refused to listen and failed to remember the

miracles you performed among them.

They became stiff-necked, and in their rebellion appointed a leader

in order to return to their slavery.

But you are forgiving God.

Gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding of love.

Therefore, you did not desert them as a young Christian and reading the old

Testament, there's a lot there that I was like, I, I don't understand a,

a lot of stuff as a young Christian, and one of the things I didn't

understand with the Israelites here, God walked with them, showed his

presence to them, performed miracles for them, brought them outta slavery.

Into and leading them to a promised land and while on the jury to the

promised land outta slavery, they're like, eh, um, it's not that great here.

Yeah, I know we're on this journey, this promised land, but you know what?

It was nice back in Egypt.

I know we were enslaved, but how bad is slavery really?

Let's go back, let's get a new leader and let's head back that way.

Let's not keep going towards God's promises.

This.

And as a young Christian, I'm like, these Israelites are stupid.

And then I became a Christian for a little bit longer and I

realized, oh, I'm stupid too.

I'm the same way I think of the miracles God's performed in my

life, the transformation, the bringing me out of slavery from my

evil desires, from what held me.

And sometimes I get in a place where I'm like.

Was it really that bad back there?

Was it really that tough?

Maybe I could go back.

You know, at least be on the way back a little bit.

I mean this, this journey to the promised part is hard.

So slavery isn't all bad, right?

And I forget, and I become exactly what Nehemiah is saying here, A

stiff-necked people, and we can become this if we don't persevere.

Now you think, well man, perseverance is hard.

You're right.

But read the Bible.

You'll be inspired by so many people that persevere.

What do I mean by so many people?

A bunch.

Job persevered through extreme suffering a loss, but remained faithful to God.

Joseph sold into slavery by his own family and imprisoned falsely.

Remained steadfast to God and eventually saved his family.

Moses endured decades of hardship as he led the Israelites outta slavery through

the wilderness, but remained faithful.

David faced trials even of his own king who tried to persecute him and his

own failures yet remained steadfast.

Esther risked her life to save the people displaying enormous courage

and perseverance in the face of.

Certain death you think?

Well, that's just a few.

Okay, let's do some more.

Ruth demonstrated perseverance in her loyalty to Naomi, going to a place

that she didn't even know where she was going, but stayed true to God.

Your people will be my people.

Your God will be my God.

Daniel endured persecution most of his life and lived as a, as a bond servant to

a kingdom that overthrew the Israelites.

And yet he never compromised his beliefs.

Paul suffered persecution, imprisonment, various hardships all the way up

to death, yet remained committed.

Abraham displayed perseverance in his journeys and faith not

knowing what God's gonna lead him.

And Hannah endured years of barrenness and social stigma, but remained

persistent with God in prayer.

I could do this for the rest of the time.

You pick a person in the Bible and follow their journey, you will see persevering.

It's one of the traits.

We like to pick up the Bible and think, oh, if I read it, I'm just

gonna read about some guy who all was good and God just brought him through.

And that is not the story of the Bible at all.

The story of the Bible is perseverance.

And if you're feeling like, man, it's hard to persevere.

Spend time with some of these people and walk with them and learn from them.

Because sometimes we think, oh man, I'm persevering this week, but if

it doesn't change next week, whoo.

I don't know if I can keep going.

In some of these cases, you're talking 40 years of perseverance

of hardship, but they remain close to God, so we must persevere.

I wanna read from the book of James now before I do, I, I'm teaching

a, a helping out facilitate a young Christian class for our college ministry.

And uh, last week we, or a couple weeks ago we went

through how to study the Bible.

And one of the things, when you said the Bible, you ought talk about who's talking.

You know what's, what's the source.

And so this is coming from James because I know when looking at you, some of you're

like, if he tells me I have to persevere, he doesn't know what I'm going through.

He doesn't know the challenges I'm facing.

He doesn't know the hardship that I'm in right now.

And you're right, I don't.

So please hear that this is coming from James now.

Who's James?

Let me just introduce James to you for a moment.

He was the brother of Jesus.

What would it take for you to grow up growing up with your siblings?

To be convinced that your sibling, your younger brother or sister, or older

brother or sister was the Lord and Christ?

It would've taken a lot to try to convince me that my brother

Victor was the Lord in Christ.

I'm like, Mm-Hmm.

You don't know him like I do.

What did he see that convinced him?

Part of it was the resurrection.

Part of it was seeing his brother come back from the dead who appeared to him.

'cause he wasn't faithful as a follower early on, but he becomes so to the point

of his own death, he will leave the church in Jerusalem for over 30 years.

The church in Jerusalem was basically mainly Jews and they were ostracized.

By the Jewish community because they were following this way,

this Christ, this Messiah that they thought that wasn't is Jesus.

And so during hardships and famine, Paul would actually go and travel around

to the Gentile churches raising money to give to the Jerusalem Jews because

some of them were starving to death.

And this is the church he's leading.

And he will die in Jerusalem for his beliefs.

So just know what he says to you.

This is where he's coming from.

Let's hear what he has to say.

James, A servant of God and a Lord Jesus Christ.

To the 12 tribes scattered among the nations greetings, consider it pure joy.

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kind.

Us because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.

Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and

complete, not lacking anything.

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God who gives generously to all without

finding fault and it'll be given to you.

I wanna highlight this first point.

Whenever you face trial, not if ever not, you might.

No.

Whenever you will.

It.

It's a part of the Christian walk.

You will face trials and what are we supposed to do with this?

Consider it pure joy.

I just told you.

You don't know what I'm going through.

I don't, but it doesn't make this any less true.

Consider it pure joy.

How do I do that?

How do I consider it?

Pure joy.

What I'm going through.

A loss of a family member.

A friend that has hurt you, A brother and sister in Christ that

has turned their back on you.

Financial hardships.

Hardships in school.

How do I consider it?

Pure joy.

'cause it's a testing of your faith.

Faith isn't living this life to go, if I'm faithful, God's gonna do this for me.

It's not a secret switch that you get to turn on and just make

God do what you want him do.

Faith is being certain that God is working even when you don't know what's

happening and you get to test this faith, you get to see the authenticity

of this faith and live this out.

And it'll help you to be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Well, what does mature and complete look like?

God's divine nature.

Being faithful, having goodness, having knowledge, having self-control,

being godly, living a life of love.

We all want these traits.

But we have to be able to go through it to get there.

And this can be the hard part, and it is hard and it's hard,

especially if it's a long journey.

Something, uh, some of, you know, in this room, not many, but some of, you

know, uh, it's been a hard journey.

From the time I was baptized, 1920, I heard a lesson and the lesson was

this, pray for your future children.

So by the time I was 20 years old.

I've been praying about what my child might be like,

and I got married in my twenties and, uh, God said no.

And, uh, with my wife's passing, I found recently, uh, an unanswered prayer

from her saying, you know, pregnancy by 2007, and her answer was not yet.

And, uh, you know, I think I got surrendered to that.

And then recently getting remarried, it was a, a hope again.

Um, and so we started praying again, you know, and just going, okay,

God, maybe this might be an option.

And we found out in early December that we had basically a one in

a thousand chance to have child.

Crushing years of prayer.

And I was like, okay, God, you know, I, I, I can't stop praying and I'm gonna

continue to pray, and I'm grateful for your prayers because it has been

enormously challenging because we found that out on a Friday and on Sunday in

December, we found out we were pregnant.

And so we are 14 weeks and we're expecting a little baby boy.

Now here's what I'm looking at.

Just so you know, a bunch of you friends of mine who have older children going.

You've not stopped persevering.

Your perseverance has only just begun.

And they are right and you are right.

I'm grateful that God has heard my prayers, but I also know that

those prayers need to continue, that I'll still be praying for my little

boy as he grows up as he develops.

'cause I'll have to persevere.

That's what it means to persevere, and many of you are still in

it with your kids persevering.

Yeah, I know.

That's right.

Because I know some of you and I hang out with some of your kids,

we persevere not just for a season, but for a lifetime.

So how do we add perseverance to our life?

We recognize instead of run.

We recognize that we're in a season of perseverance.

We reframe our mindset that, yes, this is a tough time and we're going through

it and it's okay, but I'm not gonna run.

I'm not gonna be someone who skips out on this moment.

This is a testing of my faith.

We're gonna pray instead of pout.

We can get to a place in our life sometimes when we're

praying and be like, ah.

I don't wanna pray anymore.

I just wanna pow Oh, I don't like this.

No.

If you are in a moment, pray instead of pout, and we are gonna be those

who step out instead of shrink back.

Hebrews 10 39 says, but we do not belong to those who shrink back and

are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved, this is how we

add perseverance and the benefits of this, it'll strengthen your faith.

When my baby is born.

I will get to remember those years of perseverance.

Every time I see his face, you'll develop grit.

We don't like this in our day and age.

There's a phrase that says Hard times produce hard men.

Hard men produce soft times.

Soft times produce soft men.

And soft men produce hard times, and we got some soft times that produce some

soft men, and we need to get some grit.

Yes, yes.

We need to stand up for what's right through the hardships,

through the difficulties, 'cause it'll cultivate our character.

We'll develop integrity

and we'll become a testimony of God's faithfulness.

And ultimately, as James told us, we'll be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

So as we head into communion.

Remember, we make every effort, we strive, and God will do his part in

transforming us into his divine nature.

So action steps for this week.

Pray for God's wisdom as you face these trials.

Remember James says, ask for wisdom and he'll be given to

you without fighting fault.

And if you're going through it, ask someone to walk with

you through your challenges.

I thank you for those who prayed with me.

Who've been on this journey with me, and not just this past year, not just

this past two years, but who've walked with me through my Christianity.

'cause you've kept, helped me keep faithful.

Thank you for spending that time with me, and if you're going through

it, ask someone to walk with you.

Christianity is not meant to be done alone.

We're a family.

So as we head into communion, Jesus perseveres.

This Hebrews 12, one through three.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us

throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let

us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus,

the pioneer and perfecter of faith.

For the joy set before him, he endured the cross scorning a shame, and sat down

at the right hand of the throne of God.

Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners so that

you will not grow weary and lose heart as we head in this time.

Jesus lived out what he's calling us to do for the joy set before him.

He endured.

He persevered through the cross, and where did he end the right hand of

God, which is where we, we will be someday, but we cannot grow weary.

And we cannot lose heart 'cause we have to persevere.

Let's pray.

Fathers, we come before you in this time and we recognize who you are and

how much God you persevere with us.

Let us make every effort to give back and persevere with you

because we know God that you will go to any extreme to love us.

Neither height nor depth.

Nor anything else and all of creation will separate us from your love.

Let us run the race marked out for us and achieve the crown of glory at the end

because we know God, that we will sit at the throne of God if we remain faithful.

Father, we are grateful to you for the love that you show us.

And as we take this communion, the, the bread that represents

your body, that was crushed.

In pierced and the blood that was spilled, the grape juice that we drink, we take.

So remembering that it was this death that ultimately led to the

resurrection that saves us today, and we pray this UN son's name.

Amen.