Endurance: Faith Reflections from a Cancer Oven (#17)

[A note from our Managing Editor: Tim Shorey, pastor and author, is one of our Gospel-Centered Discipleship staff writers. Tim is also currently battling stage 4 prostate cancer. On Facebook and CaringBridge, he’s writing about his journey. We’re including some of his posts in a series on our website called “The Potter’s Clay: Faith Reflections from a Cancer Oven.” To preserve the feel of a daily journal rather than a published work, we have chosen not to submit these reflections to a rigorous editing process.]

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Endurance

December 1, 2023

Dear Journal,

Last night was a good night. I slept well—thanks to good meds and people’s prayers.

But I want to record something that happened the night before, the memory of which is just coming to me with clarity now. It was the middle of the night, and I was agonizing with the pain—hating the devil for bringing pain into the world and doubting God for letting him do that.

I had moments when I felt like the enemy’s presence was real, like demons were right there trying to get me to curse and forsake God for the pain God is allowing in my life. Satan was tempting me to quit my faith in God, to just tell God that “I’ve had enough, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

I wasn’t hearing voices or anything like that. But I was very conscious of being tempted in the dark middle of the night to quit my faith because it felt like it wasn’t working for me. After all, I’m a mess right now, and God doesn’t seem to be doing much to fix me. And there seems to be no end in sight.

But then it came to me that quitting is not an option. A significant part of our fight of faith is pursuing endurance, cultivating the refusal to call it quits even when the trials are long and hard.

I checked it out yesterday afternoon. There are at least thirty times when endurance is commanded in Scripture—plus many other times when similar words, like “press on,” “Be steadfast,” and “finish the race” are used. These calls to endurance tell me that suffering shouldn’t come as a surprise. God hasn’t pulled a bait and switch, promising a life of easy but then failing to deliver. No, faith and faithfulness go together.

When I see how many times the New Testament calls the believer to endurance, I have to conclude that endurance is a major part of true faith. When true faith faces the blazing fires of raging diseases or the innumerable perils of life, its response is simply to not quit. Faith is called to outstare and outlast the pains, the disappointments, the frustrated, failed, and offended expectations, the persecutions, the rising PSA count or cancer-revealing biopsy, and all the griefs of life.

I’m not saying it’s easy, but God gives grace to do what he calls us to—even if we’re staring into what feels like a black hole of affliction.

While in his great sufferings, Job’s wife told him to “curse God and die,” to just quit his faith (Job 2:10).

That’s what it felt like Satan was telling me the night before last. But thankfully, the Spirit brought to mind that I must not quit and that those who “endure to the end shall be saved,” and that the end of endurance is hope and rest and peace (Matt. 24:13; Rom. 5:3–5; 15:5, 13; Heb. 12:1; James 1:2–4).

As John records the words of God in Revelation 14:12–13—“Here is a call for the endurance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God and their faith in Jesus. And I heard a voice from heaven saying, ‘Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.’ ‘Blessed indeed,’ says the Spirit, ‘that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!’”

Endurance to the end—whether that “end” be the second coming of Jesus or death by cancer or car accident—will get me all that! Quitting gets me nothing.

Lord helping me, I’m going to finish what’s been started, no matter how dark and dangerous the night. By his grace that will hold me fast (for how else can I do this if he does not hold me fast?), I choose again today to keep running, to stay the course, and to finish the race, that I might hear the well-done” which my soul has long desired and pursued.

Please hold me fast, dear Lord. Please hold me fast.

* You can read all the posts in this series here.