Perseverance!
“Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.”
“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.”
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”
“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.”
All these encouraging tricks, rest, and theology in the world and occasionally it all boils down to a single word: perseverance.
This word is not going to be easy, given its fallen nature. It’s going to be filled with all kinds of issues, roadblocks, spiritual attacks, and, in a less dramatic fashion, simple things like boredom and disinterest. All of these things can make anything we do — much less our creative endeavors and jobs — trickier to complete than we’d like them to be.
And, sometimes, the only solution is the simplest one, which is not giving up.
The project that was bright and shiny a week ago hits its ugly stage and it’s like a hole has been torn in the hot air balloon of creativity. Suddenly that project is dull, uninteresting, and your mind is spinning round and round trying to predict how it's going to turn out.
It’s going to stay ugly forever! I should give up and move to something new!
Good news: it won’t stay ugly forever. Bad news: that something new is going to have an ugly stage, too.
Or maybe the project itself is fine, but there’s chaos in your personal life [either good or bad chaos] and it’s effecting how much energy you have to put into the project. You just want to set it aside for a little while, until you get the energy to do it “right”, but you simply can’t because of deadlines.
In either of these scenarios the key is tenacity! And, even better news, perseverance is something that God knew we were going to need, and it is mentioned in the Bible — especially the New Testament — over and over again. Never is it presented as a Thou Shalt Commandment, either, but is usually written in a much more encouraging fashion.
The trick to perseverance is mindset, which is the same as many other things in this blog post series. Shifting our focus from doing donuts around the problems of the project, correcting our mental habits from our short-term suffering to our long-range goals [or from our long-term suffering to our short-term goals, depending on the project!], and always keeping in our mind the fact that God has given us this project to work on for a reason. He could have given it to anyone else, but He gave it to YOU.
Projects aren’t going to stay shiny and new; life isn’t going to go exactly the way is needs to; and sometimes you’re just not going to be able to create something exactly “right.” but, persevere, dear Christian! Things will get better!
Putting it into Action: the next time you are feeling like giving up, take a moment to assess and pray. When you pray, ask God for wisdom and the strength to persevere, then believe that He has given it to you! Don’t swat it away because you want out of the project!
