Struggling Well – A Transcendent, Godly State

“This calls for patient endurance on the part of the people of God who keep his commands and remain faithful to Jesus.”

—Revelation 14:12 (TNIV).

It might be more a sign of what’s required in the end times (which, I might add, we’re currently in), but the above passage also fits well with the here-and-now i.e. this sentence fits both now and to come. The refrain ‘this calls for patient endurance’ is actually mentioned also in the previous chapter (viz., 13:10). Paul also alluded to the Corinthian ‘patient endurance’ in his second letter (2 Corinthians 1:6). Patient endurance is the hallmark of the spiritually mature.

I’ve heard it said now several times that the truly mature person knows how to struggle well, endemically without complaint or compromise. The person who struggles consistently well is wise, reliable and adult-like in demeanour.

There’s always an extra dimension (or two) to these things that has to be factored in—always. These factors carry a personalised flavour and they taint the ability to struggle well, so the struggle quite often reaches momentous proportions. None of us it seems goes untouched in this way.

For instance, I’ve found dealing with those who don’t care when perhaps they should always makes struggling well all the more harder for me. Most of the time I simply accept it, but at times I must especially remember the Latin saying, Illegitimi non carborundum.

I must constantly remember that it is only those with an active (in-the-moment) faith in Jesus that genuinely (i.e. authentically) transcend the vulgar minority, and they enter the grand arena of the higher mind in exactly this way. For, when I don’t remember this covering truth I’m instantly open to pathetic complaint and compromise on an earthly scale far short of heaven—a missing of the mark!

To struggle well should be our daily, hourly, minute-by-minute charge—to institutionalise that thinking until it becomes an automatic synaptic-like trigger to rebound from, when faced with the temptation to the ordinary, carnal mode of behaviour.

© S. J. Wickham, 2009.