Perseverance: A Lost Art

“Depth comes when I must persevere; when things don’t come quickly and easily. The struggle brings a work ethic and a tenacity that may not surface any other way.” -Tim Elmore, Artificial Maturity

Tim Elmore discusses in his book, Artificial Maturity, how culture, parental upbringing, and the church has provided youth with artificial maturity. Artificial maturity is like fools gold; in that it looks good on the outside (straight A’s, made some decent choices, star athlete, leads the youth group, etc), but internally the student lacks emotional maturity. The maturity to process the information they take in and using wisdom to guide their lives. Even more, they lack a real depth in how they approach life. Most of their lives are built around a virtual world where everything is given to them or created for them. As he puts it, “Too often we condition them to be brilliant consumers, not contributors.” Thus, the world they live in becomes nothing more than to take from and not to give back; a world where everyone can be a star with the perfect note on The Voice or a funny video on YouTube. Why? Because the mindset is these things are for me and ultimately about me. In reality, they can’t handle when life doesn’t go their way because they haven’t been given opportunity to walk through it properly. This is especially evident when life does not come easy as it has been created for them to be.

So, Elmore provides one of several “hurdles” that young people face today: convenience. Young people today have trouble facing the struggles of life, even more, making sense of the troubles and evils of this world because they live in comfort. What does this mean for our youth in our churches today? What does this mean about a biblical characteristic of perseverance in life? The reality is that young people will not and cannot grow if things come to them easily. For example, my son is attempting to learn to tie his shoe. He is struggling with it and very much desires that my wife or I tie them for him. Is it easier for us and him? Certainly! Does it help him in life? No! Perhaps tying a shoe seems like a lesser skill. After all, many shoes today come with no laces, Velcro, or slip on. Why? Convenience was cleverly marketed and now a skill is passing by. Even more, what does it teach my son? If it starts with tying his shoe, what happens when the next hard struggle comes along? The point is that as a parent I must allow my son to struggle with hard things in order to teach him to work through hard things. It’s counter-intuitive as I wish he not have to struggle. However, it is not reality! Life is hard and he must learn to navigate.

Scripture speaks of the principle of and characteristic of perseverance. In Romans 5:3-5, Paul speaking to Christians under intense trial, persecution, and struggle; provides a reason that perseverance through it all is good. First, Paul says “we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance.” Paul is saying struggle actually creates perseverance in a person, particularly the believer. Parent, youth leader, mentor, family member, do you allow some struggle in the life of your youth to help create perseverance? Are you willing to?

Paul continues and states that endurance/perseverance leads to character and character to hope. Perseverance creates character or depth of a person through the struggle, the pain, the hurt, etc. Does this mean that young people will need us who are older to rescue them? Sometimes it does. Many times what they really need is for adults to walk alongside them through the struggle; to process the information and experience they are taking in to learn, grow, and develop strength to their faith. Without hard experiences and the help of adults, our youth will remain in a place of shallowness. They will become walking fool’s gold. Plus, when a young person is able to walk through a struggle of life and overcome, that perseverance will provide hope for the future. It builds in them a mindset that I have overcome before and I can do it once again. (Help them remember their successes as well.)

What does this mean? How do we take on this issue in youth ministry and at home? Practically, Elmore offers two great examples I want to share:
    1. Choose a project to collaborate on that requires effort and tenacity. Perhaps it’s climbing a mountain or biking a long distance. Maybe its a science project you can work on together. Then, throughout the project, talk over the value of working hard and enduring unglamorous attempts at succeeding.
    2. Sometime this year, allow your children to fail at something. This is counterintuitive, because most of us want our kids to “win” or succeed. When they fail, however, use it as a teachable moment and talk over the value of failure—of things’ being hard and how it makes success even sweeter in the future.

I would add to these examples a few other ideas:
    1. Every failure, struggle, hardship is a teachable moment for our young people. We as adults must develop a mindset to walk them through it. Perseverance is cultivated, much like an art form.
    2. Evaluate yourself and your depth of perseverance. If you feel like you lack in this characteristic, that is okay. It takes practice and time to develop. You can still walk your young people through something as you do.
    3. Start early in their life if you are able. We must discern what to shelter our children from, but we cannot shelter them so much that they miss opportunities to learn perseverance. If your children are older, now is the time to work through this.
    4. Perseverance is not found in our own strength, but in Christ and the Holy Spirit. Thus, we must develop an assurance and identity in Him who is our ultimate perseverance. This means lots of prayer, learning to trust, reading of Scripture, and seeking guidance from those who have traveled these roads before us.