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March 26 - Join Pastor John for a Daily Devotional

Hupomone! 
Romans 5:3 – “. . . we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance.” 
Doesn’t it seem as if the Apostle Paul went a little crazy with this verse? How can he say, “Suffering produces perseverance?” I think what helps us is to better understand the Greek word for perseverance. It is the word, “hupomone,” which means, “standing in there.” It means, “hanging in no matter what.” Hupomone says, “I’m not going to quit!” Some have called it, “cheerful endurance.” 
When my son, Tim, was a little boy he played soccer when we lived in Virginia. Like many parents, we had to travel to different fields in different towns to play different teams. One time, we played the morning after a bad rainstorm, and the field had a huge mud puddle, more like a crater, in the middle of the field. And so, here is this huge soccer field, and would you like to guess where that ball seemed to always end up? It’s like that puddle had magnetic powers. And all these years later, I still laugh in remembering no matter how often the ball would go in that mud puddle, there was only one kid out of all the players who was willing to go in there. You guessed it! That would be my son, Tim. 
During a break in the action, I said to him, “Why don’t you let someone else go in the puddle and get muddy? Why do you always have to be the one to go in there and get all wet and dirty?” Tim looked at me kind of funny and said, “Daddy, I have to get the ball!” That’s hupomone. The suffering and pressures of hanging in there, and getting all muddy and dirty in this world produces within us a perseverance to keep on, keeping on. “Winston Churchill once said, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
May God give to all of you his hupomone, the strength to persevere, as you go about your days.