“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.” (Romans 5:3-5)
From May through mid-November I had a series of challenges, one right after the other. I had covid, a back injury, covid again, the death of a friend, a mystery illness that made me feel numb and tingly all over, baffling physicians at urgent care and the ER, and finally heart rate issues. While I was grateful for the ability to work through each of these issues, having them lined up one by one did bring me to a place where I was asking…why?
These verses in Romans are my go-to verses when I am struggling, but the level of struggle in this season was enough to expose the cracks in my knowledge of what these verses even mean.
I get that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character, but had to admit I had not the faintest idea of how character produced hope.
I mean, I wanted to have hope in this period of time where I felt my body was on strike and productivity went out the window. I was limited in my interactions with people and could not fully care for my family. But when wave after wave hits, how do you stand?
The answer to my question about hope came in God’s timing. I had to go through the trial first to fully understand.
As each wave hit I had to face the reality of my ultimate weakness, my inability to control life circumstances, over and over. This led to me, rightfully, to turn to God for what I needed. Daily. Like any good exercise, this strengthened the muscle of endurance.
Experiencing more of God helped me see with clarity the areas where I was not aligned with Him. I don’t think I would have seen these things and taken them seriously if they weren’t in the way of what I desperately needed in this season–more proximity to God.
Particular to me, I learned that I have a deeply rooted belief that I am the sum of what I accomplish each day. This belief has been in my way my whole life, but these set of circumstances exposed it and the only way out was through.
So I learned that character is built on allowing God to change us to align us more with Him. Suffering just seems to provide that perfect soil for this kind of growth. For me, suffering loosened my white-knuckled grip on all areas of my life and God was able to shoehorn his way in. He taught me that I am of great value even while I am laying in a bed not doing anything. This shift led me to have a strengthened and steadfast hope because I learned how to face adversity with God and will be better prepared for future adversity because I will know to seek His help.
I think without character, we have a fickle hope. It is a hope that appears when we believe we are going to get what we want and remains only during trial-free periods of life.
So now I see it as a group of interconnected mental muscles. Suffering strengthens your endurance muscle, the endurance muscle strengthens your character muscle, and the character muscle strengthens your hope muscle–that with these stronger muscles you can stand and face any adversity.
Lord, thank You for being with me these past 6 months and using every trial to strengthen my character and then, in turn, my hope. Thanks to You, my hope is no longer fickle, no longer hinged on me getting my way or being in a trial-free period of my life. I now have enduring hope in You. You are steadfast, You are faithful, even when I am not. You have been my helper and You will continue to be my helper. For that I give you abundant thanks. Amen.