Now for this very reason also, applying all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence, and in your moral excellence, knowledge, and in your knowledge, self-control, and in your self-control, perseverance, and in your perseverance, godliness, and in your godliness, brotherly kindness, and in your brotherly kindness, love. 2 Peter 1:5-7
The word perseverance here in Greek is the word hupomone’ meaning to remain behind, a patient enduring. It’s mainly translated as perseverance, but also as patient endurance, and steadfastness.
You’ve chosen a goal and set out to meet it. Along the way you meet unforeseen obstacles and hinderances, possibly detours, and even a few people that work to get you off your path. All sorts of things to deter you from your original goal. Kinda like Pilgrim’s Progress. The hike to the goal if you’ve never done it before can be filled with all sorts of emotions and hardships. Even with the best preparations one can still be taken off track, or stopped. Injuries, sickness, emergencies, weather, and other calamities can take over your progress to your original goal. It usually takes perseverance to accomplish bigger goals. You have to be willing to go on after interruptions from the path. And you have to be willing to push on even when you don’t always feel like it. Of course there are limits and it’s important to know your own, but most people sell themselves way short of what their actual limits really are.
Then there’s the spiritual component to …goals. If the Holy Spirit has given you a task, or goal, or direction, then the endurance / perseverance takes on a whole new dimension. If we are under His instructions then most certainly we will need His strength and endurance to complete the task to reach the goal. The Spirit does not give us tasks that we usually can complete under our own understanding and abilities. He gives us tasks that require HIS involvement in them. His tasks and goals require faith GIVEN by Him to us. Most tasks require at least His semi-mature fruit to be in us. Several fruit are mentioned in this scripture in 2 Peter. Most tasks from Him will require us working on those fruit to maturity while on the path to the goal He has set before us.
Asking Him for more faith means that you have accomplished and had victory in the last current test of your faith. For He gives to those who have sown that they might reap. What have you sown .. in your life lately? With the people around you? Have you sown perseverance into your own life? To even have perseverance Peter mentions four other things / attributes BEFORE perseverance. Maybe those might need to be worked on prior if we lack perseverance?
Discipline and self control lead to endurance and perseverance. Real prayer takes honesty and discipline. For our enemies will try every which way to cut off our communication with Him. He is our ultimate encourager. He is the One who wants us to succeed more than anyone else. So He wants to do it WITH us, and asks us to allow Him to show us the way. He wants us to ask Him questions, He wants us to have a running dialogue with Him throughout our day.
Personally my own perseverance is MUCH more effective when I hear Him … encouraging me to ‘trust Him’, and ‘follow Him’.