Endurance For Dull-mindedness

 “I begin this week in weakness.” 

Yes, that is what I told Father as I began my time with him this morning! 

There were so many feelings about everything going on in me because of everything going on around me. I was aware of a dullness of mind that may have been a sign of overload. When I came to God like that it almost felt like I was challenging him to see if he could handle me being so dull-minded and still get something through to my heart, mind, and soul. 

After some wonderful trails through Psalm 26 and Zephaniah 3 this past week, I am back to the main path of how Paul prayed in Colossians 1. Today’s starting point was: “for all endurance and patience with joy”.[1] 

Because of my dullness of mind, I took the first word, “endurance”, and began at the beginning to see how endurance would flow out of both the praying and the experiencing of what Paul prayed and experienced. I knew that I needed the refresher, but it felt like I also needed to grasp something in a deeper way, and, perhaps, for a deeper need. 

The primary ministry of the Spirit was to awaken my heart to how the faith, the love, and the hope of the Colossian Christians was the three-dimensional foundation of everything Paul prayed. Nothing in Paul’s prayer can be fulfilled in our lives unless we are living from our new hearts in “faith in Christ Jesus”, “love for all the saints”, and “the hope laid up for us in heaven”.[2] If those are not there, Paul does what we find in Galatians to reattach us to the good news of great joy in the gospel so we are once living by grace through faith. 

This means that the “endurance and patience with joy” prayer request requires a genuine attachment to the reality of a growing faith, love, and hope. My quest this morning was to meditate on how these three universal realities of the kingdom of God would not only continue mentoring me in how to join Paul in prayer, but would also build the realness of my ability to endure with joy this very day. I particularly wanted to know how meditating on these realities would build my endurance where dull-mindedness was trying to maintain its grip on my thoughts! 

When I considered how “faith in Christ Jesus” gives endurance, I felt the genuine and good feeling of attachment to the reality that faith attaches us to Jesus Christ who is our strength. He is the rock on which we stand. He is the one and only Savior of the world. He is perfect and complete. He is the truth, the reality, the Word of God, and so our faith in him constantly builds in us so we press on with him (endurance) since he is incapable of giving up on what the Triune God is doing to save us. 

When I then considered how “the love that you have for all the saints” meshes with endurance, I was reminded that the agapè-hesed-love of the kingdom of God is real when the believers are all experiencing the agapè-hesed-love of the Triune God.[3] That love, by its very nature, is enduring. The quality of love in God is such that it never fails. If there is a love in us that never fails because it is the very love God has poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit whom he has given us,[4] then it will lead us to become enduring in everything to do with God’s people since the love we have “for all the saints” is the enduring, faithful, unstoppable, irresistible, unfailing love of God. If we have that love, and pray the way Paul prayed, we will constantly build up that naturally enduring love into the reality of enduring in us. And, yes, I’m looking forward to seeing how God does that in me this week! 

The “hope laid up for you in heaven” already gives us the taste and experience of the realities of eternal life in the here-and-now. Everything we hope for (know for certain about the future) has a level of experience in this earthly life. We already know God now, but hope keeps us excited about how much more and better we will know God then. As Paul said, “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”[5] We already have Jesus with us always, but the new heavens and the new earth will give us a perfection of being with him that is beyond fully imagining. We already have the love of God poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who is in us, and the Spirit is the deposit of God in our lives guaranteeing all the rest that is to come,[6] but the wonders of living in the Spirit in the new heavens and the new earth is unthinkably wonderful in the fullness we will experience then.[7] 

Conclusion: the foundation of faith, love, and hope, assures me this morning that it makes sense that these would fuel endurance in whatever I am going to face today. At the same time, it also leads me into relationship with God by faith, attached to his agapè-hesed-love, and emotionally encouraged with the certainty of my eternal hope, so that I am strengthened in my time with God to go into this day expecting his presence and strength to give me “all endurance and patience with joy”. 

After my time with God, my morning exercise routine gave opportunity to listen to a good podcast about who we are in Christ that affirmed what God is doing to build my endurance on the foundation of my faith, love and hope. This encouragement also led to me feeling clear-minded to share God’s love with others as opportunities presented themselves. And I am aware that I have already made decisions to endure things instead of try fixing them, something God has been working on me a lot as of late, so I expect that this will position me for what he can do instead of forcing what I can do. 

All in all, God broke through my dull mindedness this morning and blessed with the answer to Paul’s prayer that I would “be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him”.[8] Many aspects of God’s will became clear to me, and now I can walk with endurance in the things that are worthy of my Lord Jesus Christ.

 

© 2022 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8

Email: in2freedom@gmail.com

Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)

 

 

 

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[1] Colossians 1:11

[2] Colossians 1:4-5

[3] Agapè-love is the Greek word used in the New Testament to refer to the primary love of God for his people, and the primary love that governs the kingdom of God. In God, it is the desire to do his best for his children. In God’s children, it is our desire for God’s best for others (including our enemies).

Hesed-love is the Hebrew word used in the Old Testament to refer to God’s unfailing love, his faithful love, his steadfast love, with a strong focus on God being faithful to his covenant for the simple fact that his love never fails.

Both agapè and hesed love unite to teach God’s children how to love “all the saints” the same way as the Triune God loves all of us.  

[4] Romans 5:5 (context is Romans 5:1-5)

[5] I Corinthians 13:12

[6] Ephesians 1:13-14 (context is Ephesians 1:3-14)

[7] God speaks of his new heavens and new earth in Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22 in the Old Testament, and in II Peter 3:13 and Revelation 21:1 in the New Testament.

[8] The first thing Paul prayed for in his prayer of Colossians 1:9-14.