Perseverance Series

Perseverance.

My generation made this a dirty word - we were labelled as a generation of slackers

Jesus didn’t give up- when he was being beaten, nailed, he could have shouted out enough but he didn’t

The disciples gave up - they were scarred and feared for their lives but Jesus didn’t give up on them.

He came back to them

God wants you to persevere.

One of the reasons that it’s so hard to follow Jesus is because we know where it leads - to a cross.

So how did Jesus persevere?

We could probably say that he did so because he was God, so it was an easy thing for him to do.

But the bible says in Philippians he emptied himself of all his supernatural power.

He was as powerful as Superman with a pocketful of Kryptonite.

Powerless.

And the blood that he sweat, was that the sign of a person relying on supernatural ability to get him through, I don’t think so.

Jesus was able to persevere because he knew what lay ahead.

He had a goal in sight that allowed him to not ignore his present struggle but see it as paling into insignificance with what lay ahead.

Any one know what that goal was??

To see you come to faith and press on.

See the disciples didn’t have that and so when Jesus got nailed they scattered, they didn’t know what was ahead.

Friday could well have been the end of the story as far they were concerned.

But there was something else that allowed Jesus to persevere, not only was he totally sold out to the cause of seeing you come to faith,

He was totaly devoted to the one one put that cause in his life-- God.

It’s like this when you look at your life, it can be seen like a game of command and conquer.

God wants to Command and Conquer in your lives, and when he’s done that he’ll do it in your schools and homes

And the resurrection is a model of what lays ahead for those who perse revere, not some half-cut existence but a reward for those who remain faithful.