Dec.12.02: Light For The Day - "Enduring Faith"

-- James 1:4 (NRSV)
"And let endurance have its full effect,
so that you may be mature and complete,
lacking in nothing."

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We're very fickle in our faith, aren't we?
We are inconsistent, ambivalent.
We sing "My faith looks up to Thee" ... until
the medicine stops working, until the lights go out,
until the bill comes due and we don't have what
it takes to pay it. Until our grades slip or
our career takes a turn or we loose a mate. ...

How do we learn consistent faith?
We learn in one day at a time.
We learn it through endurance, James writes:
"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you
face trials of many kinds, because you know that
the testing of your faith develops endurance."
(James 1:2-3).

He's not talking about a will-o-the-wisp faith
that starts out on the 100-meter sprint and,
quicker than you can think, is over.
Anybody can take ten, fifteen, or twenty minutes
of a test. But ten days or fifteen days, or a year,
or two or three? Well, that's another matter.
that's the enduring faith James is talking about.

-- Charles Swindoll

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-- Romans 5:1-5 (NIVUS)
1 Therefore, since we are justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
2 Through Him we have obtained access to this grace
in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of
sharing the glory of God.
3 More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings,
knowing that suffering produces endurance,
4 and endurance produces character,
and character produces hope,
5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love
has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit
which has been given to us."

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