perseverance on Personal Transformation

Resilience is the virtue that enables people to move through hardship and become better. No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffe...

A group of researchers sought to study the nuances of self-control. They conducted a study with a few dozen kindergarten students and gave them a painfully boring, repetitive task designed to test how...

Give us, O Lord, steadfast hearts, which no unworthy thought can drag downward, unconquered hearts, which no tribulation can wear out, upright hearts, which no unworthy purpose may tempt aside. Bestow...

O, make your Word a swift Word, passing from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip and conversation; that, as the rain returns not empty, so neither may your Word, but accomplish that for wh...

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.

The missionary doctor Albert Schweitzer wrote in his memoir, “In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should...

We must accept life for what it actually is - a challenge to our quality without which we should never know of what stuff we are made, or grow to our full stature.

There is only one road to true human greatness: the road through suffering.

You cannot expect people to seriously consider your idea without accepting the possibility that they will challenge it. Accepting that process of engagement as the terrain of leadership liberates you ...

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

James Stockdale and what is now known as the Stockdale Paradox comes from his experience as a prisoner of war for seven years during the Vietnam War. The Stockdale Paradox, made famous in Jim Collins’...

Don’t get sucked into short-term thinking. Your struggles will not last forever, but you will.

Journalist Eric Severeid recalls a valuable lesson he learned at seventeen while preparing for an ambitious journey. He and a friend had set out to canoe from Minneapolis to the historic fur-trading p...

Gratitude has a ripple effect, spreading warmth and positivity to those around us. It is nearly impossible to hold onto resentment or self-pity while maintaining a grateful heart. John Kavanaugh share...

Spiritual maturity is measured in terms of persevering faith, not perfect behavior.

The Law The ambiguous place of the law in Christian thought can be seen historically in battles between antinomians and legalists, each side finding New Testament support, and the present text would ...

Life can often feel like a bully, throwing punches at us we didn’t see coming. We get taken out, for a moment. But how we jump back in becomes our decision.

“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”

When we’re chasing our dreams, all the turbulence we face shouldn’t scare us into pulling back, though. The shaking, jerking, and rattling in our lives are telling us we’re getting close to the breakt...

A Tough Way to Start Ministry In this captivating passage Jesus’ new followers discovered early on this was not going to be a ‘pleasure cruise.’  Jesus’ inaugural ‘sermon event’ back home in Nazareth...

The hymnwriter and theologian F. W. Faber writes with beautiful prose the challenges that each one of us faces when it comes to living a life faithfully according to the truth that is within us: M...

In Jonathan Kozol’s book, Amazing Grace , he tells of the struggles and sufferings of people in a community in the Bronx, New York. He is amazed at the courage and resilience he found there. He then ...

Eternal and Glorious God, Your grace calls us toward growth and service in You. Yet today we acknowledge the many times we have forgotten Your mercy and rejected Your love. Forgive us when we sin agai...

Calling People often give me weird looks when I talk about being “called” by God. A pastor can be “called” to devote their working time to shepherding a church. A parent can be “called” to invest in ...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a best-selling statistician, argues that it is not even mere resilience we need, but what he calls antifragility . He groups things into three categories. First, fragile...

There are three stages to every great work of God: first it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done.

I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.

A blessing for the courage to try Blessed are you, faced with the impossible.  You who do not take your eyes away  from what threatens to swallow you whole.  You who stare down reality,  tho...

In his book Unshakeable Faith , Max Lucado shares a true story about a friend who competed in an Ironman Triathlon in Lake Placid, New York. You can compete in Ironman races around the world in p...