Enduring Hardness
Mar/Apr. 2000

Is there a difference between enduring hardness and enjoying hardness? well, yes, there is a vast difference. One might think hardness simply means difficulty; or primitiveness, or challenging. It may conjure up thoughts of one's last elk hunt or the mountain-climb that presented a test of skill and invigorated the senses: perhaps the climb out of the ravine where the largest bull elk you had ever seen died after you had shot him. That was hard, but you enjoyed it. You filled your freezer with meat and hung his trophy head on your wall. You're still enjoying it. That doesn't represent hardness. If we are enjoying it, we are not enduring it.
Enduring means persisting in what we are called to do when our course becomes unbearable; when duty and responsibility thrust us into circumstances that threaten our safety, deprive us of comfort, control or the seeming necessities of life. Circumstances that seem to profit us nothing, but will move us toward the mark of simple obedience for Jesus' sake.

Hardness is not always glamorous––almost never is. Hardness may mean demeaning, discouraging, or exhausting, but not necessarily rewarding––at least, not in the foreseeable future. Hardness is usually unpleasantness of some kind; something you would not choose if it were left up to you to decide.

Enduring means to continue over a long period of time; to hang in there simply because you believe that when you began the course it was the will of God. Therefore it is still the will of God, and you are not authorized to quit.

Now we face another question, How long does it take to be obedient? The answer, of course, is "to the end." That means the end of the project, or, in the case of the Christian, to the end of his life. Jesus is the example. He learned obedience by the things that He suffered. Hebrews 5: 8.

Before His incarnation Jesus was in the form of God. He thought it not robbery to be equal with God. From that situation He, of His own volition, made himself of no reputation–that means He emptied Himself of everything that was inconsistent with humanity and took upon Himself the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. And being found in fashion as a man He humbled himself and became obedient––unto death Philippians 2: 5-8

It is significant that the Word says He became obedient. To become is a process. It is not a one-time, momentary state. It is a character quality that is a permanent part of the nature. Obedience cannot be ascribed to a person's résumé of character qualities on the basis of a single act, or a brief period in which he or she uncharacteristically obeyed a specific order, or because of an isolated incident.

Jesus became obedient when He had finished the work God had given Him to do. Jesus defined obedience when He said of Himself, "I came down from Heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him that sent me." Obedience, therefore, involved self-denial as well as the pursuit of accomplishing the commander's purpose. That meant sometimes having no place to lay His head. Many nights He slept without shelter. It meant rejection by many of those to whom He had ministered. It meant betrayal and denial by his closest friends. And ultimately it meant physical torture and death.

If Jesus had changed His attitude somewhere short of the cross, would He have been called obedient? No! Because Jesus Himself said, "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work."

The course to obedience took Him through degrees of hardness that to us may be unimaginable, but it was designed by the Father to test Him to the ultimate in every way that we could ever be tempted. And yet, as a man, He endured that hardness and in so doing He qualified for the ultimate of suffering; He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, the cross of Calvary.

When it was finished Jesus had become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

When Paul wrote to Timothy to endure hardness as a good soldier, he did not have in mind an employee or a servant. He had in mind a soldier whose life was on the line; not a mere helper, but one whose commitment was to fulfill the will of his commander-in-chief or to die in the process. If you were in a life and death conflict––and you are–– how could you think otherwise.

This may sound melo-dramatic in our day when, as a whole, our people no longer think so heroically. But as believers we must once again accept the reality of what we have assumed by becoming members of the body of Christ. "You are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."
Colossians 3: 1 "You are not your own, you are bought with a price." I Corinthians 6:20 "You are in the world but you are not of it." John 17: 11 Jesus said, "They hated me, therefore they will hate you also." These are not just sayings. They are facts. There is a conflict. We are at war, so how could we think otherwise?

Speaking about this subject to a group of young people who were about to launch on a short-term mission trip I was dwelling at some length on the issue of enduring hardness. As I continued to develop the subject one of those present asked, "Do you know something about this trip that we don't? This is a little scary."

"No," I said, "But although I know that this is only a short trip coming up, I also know that you will be serving the Lord for the rest of your lives. You will be tempted to be discouraged when, from time to time, God leads you through hard places. You may feel that He has forsaken you or forgotten you. You may even be tempted to think that a deprivation or the inequity of some circumstance or an apparent failure is an indication that you are out of God's will and want to turn back just before you reach the goal God has set for you in it all. I am not prophesying ill fortune. I just don't want you to react wrongly to any possible circumstance, but to see the Lord in it and know the tools He uses to fashion in you the image of His Son."

It is apparent in Paul's letters to the Corinthian church that not all things went well all the time. It seems there were trials, differences of opinion and even outright disrespect for his ministry at times. He found himself competing with false teachers for the allegiance of the Corinthian saints.
So what did he say to them when they paraded out the imposters and heretics who had become their examples?

'Such are false apostles, deceitful workers. II Corinthians 11: 13
And what were the evidences of his apostleship that he presented to them? Read II Corinthians 11: 13––12: 12

Notice that his main credentials were his enduring of hardness in faithfully carrying out that which God had commissioned him to do. It is also evident that there was an upside to the hardness that he frequently endured. Something transpired in his heart that made the suffering worthwhile.

God does not conceal the failings of His people in the Old Testament or in the New. There are those who will find it difficult to believe that Paul had any character flaws at all, but one of his noticeable negative qualities was pride. Paul himself was conscious of this.

Only by pride cometh contention. Proverbs 13: 10 The book of Acts reveals an incident of contention so severe that it fractured, for a time, the relationship between Barnabas and Paul. Although God used that incident to multiply the forces, He did not fail to deal with the pride.
Paul, struggling with some kind of affliction, asked the Lord for deliverance. Not once, but three times, he called upon the Lord to have the problem removed. But God showed him that this was a thorn in his flesh, a messenger of Satan sent by God to buffet him lest he should be unduly exalted by the abundance of revelations that God had given him.
What Paul saw as affliction God had sent as a solution to Paul's problem of self-exaltation. Perhaps also that others would not exalt him over much.

When Paul prayed the third time God answered him by saying, 'my grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness." II Corinthians 12: 9

The revelation that this affliction was from God to humble him, weaken him, and make him a fit vessel changed his perspective forever. Suddenly this cursed affliction that had aggravated Paul and distracted him, became a blessed gift from God.

Paul responded, "Most gladly will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions. In distresses for Christ's sake, for when I am weak, then am I strong." II Corinthians 12: 10
Paul's original perspective, like most of ours, considered his comfort. Without an encumbering affliction he would have liberty to carry out his important work. Therefore he wanted God to make it go away. But once he heard God's voice, he could actually rejoice in what he had despised because it was of God to make the image of Christ visible in him.
What a great example Paul is in this struggle between flesh and Spirit. Even in the Apostle Paul this phenomenon occurred, so he was well qualified to write about it.

"For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be mad manifest in our body. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus: sake that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh. So then death worketh in us, but life in you. "II Corinthians 4: 6-12

Inside is the treasure and on the outside is an earthen vessel. Outside is the body of flesh with all of its weakness, opaqueness and imperfection; but Inside is the treasure, which is the glorious light of the life of Jesus Christ.

God is at work to turn us inside out, so to speak, that the life of Jesus might be manifest in our mortal flesh and that we might shine as lights in an otherwise darkened world. Perhaps that is the picture drawn for us in the account of Gideon's tiny army. Judges 7: 16-21

And he divided the three hundred men into three companies, and he put a trumpet in every man's hand, with empty pitchers, and lamps within the pitchers. So Gideon and the hundred men that were with him came unto the outside of the camp, and they blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers that were in their hands. And the three companies blew the trumpets, and brake the pitchers and held the lamps, and they cried, 'The sword of the Lord and of Gideon.' They stood every man in his place round about the camp: and the entire host ran, and cried, and fled.
The pitchers, of course, are the earthen vessels, which we are. The lamps are the life of Jesus. And what it takes to break us that Christ might be seen is the hardness we are called upon to endure in the form of trouble, perplexity and persecution.

Paul said, "We are troubled on every side but not distressed. "It is not unusual, then, for the saints to be in trouble; but it is not normal that the trouble should cause them distress. That's the problem God wants to deal with, and He uses the trouble to do it.

Paul was perplexed. What does that mean for Paul? The same as it means for us: i.e., "What's happening? I don't know what to do next. Which way shall I turn?

Perplexity is not a problem; but if it leads to distress, that's a problem. Perplexity, like trouble, is external. There is little we can do about it; it will come. But distress and despair are internal, and they overtake us when we are not resting confidently in the Lord.

Through the trouble, the perplexity, the casting down and the persecutions, which are always monitored and controlled by the Lord Himself, God breaks the pitcher, the light of the life of Jesus shines out, and our enemies are ultimately put to flight.

Trials and afflictions are meant by the enemy to destroy us; but God has designed them to break us and make us useable for His own purposes. Then we begin to experience the resurrection life Paul wrote about in Philippians 3:10: "That I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death.

Sometimes we fail to remember what we know. A good example of that would be Romans 8: 28, 29. Maybe some don't know what those verses say, but many of us, on occasion, quote verse 28. It says, "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God; to them who are the called according to His purpose." When we remember, and rest in that, we are safe and at peace no matter what. When we forget it, God has to take us around again. But in the end He will succeed. He will cause the image of His Son to be seen in us.