Hello Metro,

In Revelation 3:7-13 Jesus commends the Christians of the church in Philadelphia for their patient endurance. Jesus says they have kept his word. Scripture is filled with calls to endurance. Endurance conjures up images of things like marathons and other endeavors that require sustained effort. In the Christian life we have need of endurance.

I hope the following metaphor by John Piper encourages you in considering Jesus' call to all of us to endure. We can in the strength and power he provides (Colossians 1:11)!

“I have just preached to my people several messages in which I pleaded with my people to be “coronary Christians,” not “adrenal Christians.” Not that adrenaline is bad, I said; it gets me through lots of Sundays. But it lets you down on Mondays. The heart is another kind of friend. It just keeps on serving – very quietly, through good days and bad days, happy and sad, high and low, appreciated and unappreciated. It never says, “I don’t like your attitude, Piper, I’m taking the day off.” It just keeps humbly lub-dubbing along. It endures the ways adrenaline doesn’t.

Coronary Christians are like the heart in the causes they serve. Adrenal Christians are like adrenaline – a spurt of energy and then fatigue. What we need in the cause of social justice (for example, against racism and abortion), and the cause of world missions (to plant churches among the unreached peoples of the world), and the cause of personal holiness and evangelism are not spurts of energy, but people who endure for the long haul. Marathoners, not sprinters.”