Endurance

The radio show discusses the topic of endurance, using the example of football players needing physical endurance to succeed. The speaker emphasizes that endurance is also necessary in the Christian journey, but it is spiritual endurance or inner strength that is required. The speaker explains that challenges in life are like training for endurance and that overcoming them builds spiritual muscles. When endurance is developed, we become resilient and exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. The speaker encourages listeners not to avoid challenges, as they are opportunities for endurance to grow and for us to become perfect and complete. The speaker ends with a prayer for grace to endure and stay faithful to the end. Salaam to you all our fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord. This is Radio HCI Today of the Harvest Chapel International Okumasi. We are glad to have you join us for today's Morning Glory Devotion. This is Pastor Daniel Agbeko-Bwafo and with me is my wife, Dignes Felicia. It's our desire that God will reveal His infallible wisdom to us as we spend this time together in Jesus' mighty name. Please let's share a word of prayer. Father we give you praise and we thank you for our lives this morning. We thank you for giving us strength and health. We thank you for this opportunity to look into your word together. We ask that you reveal your counsel to us, teach us of your ways and help us to walk in your word all the days of our lives. In Jesus' mighty name we have prayed, Amen. Beloved, we want to take a confession together from Joshua 1 verse 8. Joshua 1 verse 8, This book of the law shall not depart out of my mouth, but I shall meditate in it day and night, that I may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then I will make my way prosperous, and then I will have good success, Amen. Beloved, the topic for today's devotion is endurance, endurance. And our text will be taken from James chapter 1 verse 1 through 8. I'll be reading from the New English Translation, James chapter 1. From James, a slave of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes dispersed abroad, greetings. My brothers and sisters, consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its perfect effect, so that you will be perfect and complete, not deficient in anything. But if anyone is deficient in wisdom, he should ask God who gives to all generously and without reprimand, and it will be given to him. But he must ask in faith without doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed around by the wind, for that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord, since he is a double-minded individual, unstable in all his ways. Beloved, here ends the reading of the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Endurance Endurance The game of football is a very interesting and action-packed game. Ninety minutes of pole-to-pole action with twenty-two players running after a ball in an attempt to net it, takes great endurance, strength and skill to accomplish the set task of netting a ball within the given time. Footballers, therefore, are taken through training regimes to boost their endurance to last for the duration of the game or at least most of it. Without endurance, even the most skillful of players will not be as productive as he or she needs to be. I like football and have been a footballer before. Unfortunately, I did not shine as a footballer for one reason, I lacked physical endurance. I remember clearly during football trainings, our coach would require that we jog three times around the school field. I particularly thought he was punishing us unnecessarily for by my first round, I would be panting and gasping for air. Instead of persevering to go the second and third round, I would abandon jogging and go into the actual playing of the football game. It was later I realized that not heeding to the test of three rounds of jogging imparted on my endurance level and my whole performance in general, it took away my shine as a player as I was mainly used as a substitute. I truly regret not pushing myself to build my physical endurance to become a better player. Who knows, probably I could have become Ghana's first female version of Lionel Messi by now. Beloved, the Bible draws our attention to the truth that it is not only in earthly games that endurance is needed or necessary. The Christian work is one that demands or thrives so much on endurance. In our Christian work, however, we do not necessarily thrive on physical endurance but spiritual endurance otherwise known as inner strength. It is not an easy journey at all. We need all the tenacity we can amass to go on and finish the journey in the set time God permits for us without quitting or performing abysmally. The whole goal of building endurance is so we will last the duration of our lives without breaking. Endurance makes us tough enough to go through all the changing scenes of life still exhibiting Christ-likeness, making impact as God's ambassadors, and bowing out of earth having fulfilled purpose. Beloved, if endurance is this important to our Christian work, then how do we build endurance? Our God and Father, like my football coach, knows what is best for us and makes the initiative to help us acquire this all-important asset. How does He do this? James 1 verse 3 reveals that our Father in heaven allows and orchestrates the testing of our faith through diverse challenges of life. Overcoming the challenges builds our spiritual muscles and produces the desired endurance. The challenges also give our endurance the opportunity to grow or mature. When endurance has had its intended effect, we become perfect and complete, not deficient in anything. We become resilient, tough, patient, and exhibit the fruit of the Spirit at all times, the fruit of love, patience, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. As stated in Galatians chapter 5 verse 22, that is when we are able to face all that comes our way as we journey here on earth and still stand, being examples to others and making it to our ultimate destination, heaven. Not bowing to the pressures of this life nor switching camps from the Lord's camp to that of the devil to dine with Him in the face of the difficulties of life. Like the footballer who has built endurance, we will play full-time excelling in whatever role our coach assigns to win the match at the end of the day. So beloved, challenges are to us what training is to the sportsmen. We need not avoid them. Doing so is to leave our faith unproven, giving no opportunity for our endurance to mature and robbing us of being perfect and complete to face the changing scenes of this life to the end. Amen. Please, let's take our memory verse together. Today's memory verse is taken from James chapter 1 verse 3 reading from the NLC version. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. James chapter 1 verse 3. For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. Please, let's bow our heads for a word of prayer. Father, in the name of Jesus, we thank you for this word that has come to us this morning, for the clarity that comes to us that even in the face of challenges of God, as a coach, as a father, it is for a purpose so that our endurance will have a chance to grow, making us perfect to be able to stand all the changing scenes of this life. Papa, it is our prayer that this morning you give us every grace that we need, that in the face of challenges, we do not bow out or find alternative routes, but endure so that we become the perfect people you have destined us to be. We thank you. We bless you. In Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Beloved, indeed challenges give endurance the opportunity to grow, so you must not avoid them at all, because doing so is to become immature in your walk of faith. I pray that God will grant us grace to face and endure through all of life's challenges, and may He find us faithful even to the end. In Jesus mighty name. Amen and Amen. Precious one, till we come your way again same time tomorrow, please stay blessed and have a fruitful day. Amen and Amen.