Is your endurance-strength ebbing? Hebrews 10:36 says, “For you have NEED of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise.”

The Strong’s definition for endurance is: constancy, perseverance, continuance, bearing up, steadfastness, holding out, patient endurance.

Note in my Bible: It describes the capacity to continue to bear up under difficult circumstances, not with a passive complacency, but with a hopeful fortitude that actively resists weariness and defeat.

Here is one of my favorite verses in the Amplified. Ephesians 3:16 says, “May He grant you out of the rich treasury of His glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man by the (Holy) Spirit (Himself indwelling your innermost being and personality).”

I use a part of this verse as a faith declaration: I am right now being strengthened and reinforced in and by and through Your mighty power. I love the word ‘reinforced’ because it reminds me of rebar.

I am reading an autobiography written by Darlene Deibler Rose. She and her husband had been married one year when they went as missionaries to New Guinea. They and the other missionaries with them we captured and imprisoned during World War II. When she was flat emotionally, spiritually, and physically the Lord would tenderly strengthen her so she could endure.

“Tortured For Christ” is the story of pastor Richard Wurmbrand in Romania who was imprisoned for his faith. One time when he was drugged and beaten senseless, then thrown onto the floor of his cement lined cell, he could not form words to pray. He said: Jesus I love You. The Lord wrapped him in warmth and strengthened him so he could endure.

Hebrews 12:2 says, “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”