Perseverance

Sometimes, God uses one situation in our lives to teach us something about another one. When I was about to give up on something this week because I felt like I’d hit one hurdle too many in the youth work I'm involved in, God used a few phone calls to remind me why I shouldn't.

Here’s the story – I receive a message from a friend in Uganda that makes me worried, so I dial his number to check that everything is okay… after a few rings I hear the phrase I've become way too familiar with; “sorry, we could not connect the call to the number you dialed.”

I hang up and try again… 

no less than 24 phone calls later I finally get through to my friend.

24 phone calls!

It’s hard to describe how it feels when you have to hang up for the 23rd time, still having not heard the voice you've been waiting for on the end of the phone.

Persistence can be painful, especially when you feel like everything you try is failing. It turned out that my friend was fine, but the ridiculous effort I had to put in to find that out, taught me something.

Sticking at something when it feels like its taking more time and effort that it should, is really hard ...but what motivates us to do it anyway are the people we love.

The great thing is that God doesn't ask us to love the task, he asks us to love the people.

That means that I don’t have to love dialing the number; I have to love my friend. So I dial the number because I love my friend.

It also means that when I feel like I've hit a dead end in setting up a youth group or organizing an event, I have to remember the people that I'm trying to love in this task; I don't have to love making the risk assessment or going through the process of trying to find new leaders. I have to love the people that I'm reaching through these things and persevere because of them.

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This week we held our first Rock Solid of the new school year. When we first launched Rock Solid in November 2013, only 3 girls turned up, and for the first 3 months that was it and no one else came. We persevered for a while for the sake of the girls that came, and started to watch each of them grow.

Trying to think of enough games that you can play with only 3 people is harder than you might first imagine, but as we persisted, we gradually started to see Rock Solid growing too; slowly, we began to welcome a few more girls to the group and then started to watch each of them growing as individuals too...

Well this week when we added the 19th name to the register and I had to add a waiting list to our folder!

With that inspiration behind me, I now face a new challenge of growing our youth work and discipleship further. I might be hoping that it will be smooth and easy, but I'm not expecting that to be the case. I'm expecting a challenge... I know that as I seek to stretch and grow the young people I work with, God will stretch and grow me - and I know from experience that it’s unlikely to be comfortable. But I will continue to get up each morning and do what I do because I know that God has asked me to do it, and by his grace has given me love for the young people that we work with... and I have faith that this time next year, I'll have another story to tell about what God can do when we persevere.