Endure Hardship
by George Bowen
"Suffer hardship with me, as a good soldier of Christ Jesus." - 2 Timothy 2:3
If you are a disciple of Christ, you are a soldier of Christ. If you are an expectant of salvation, you are a follower of the captain of salvation. When it was proposed to you to become his follower, it was distinctly intimated that you were to follow him to a field of conflict.
Endure hardness— that is, endure things hard to be endured. The army of Christ resembles not a Northern army rushing down from its inhospitable home into the fertile plains and genial climate of Italy … but resembles rather the little company that gathered around David in the days of Saul’s indignation, and followed him from glen to glen, from rock to rock, sleeping under the open skies or in caverns, snatching their scanty food where they found it, every moment on the alert for their numerous and powerful enemies, with the whole nation ready to fall upon and crush them, and with nothing to look to but the promise of God, the promise of a kingdom.…
Therefore let us consecrate what we have to God; cease from seeking great things of earth for ourselves; receive in sweet submission the daily trials that will force their way into the presence of the Christian, in whatever retired apartment he may dwell; and give ourselves heartily to the conflict with our adversary, in whatsoever form he may approach us. What things to some are hard, to others are not; our Commander places us in such a corps as is most likely to furnish us with the probation that we need. You have to endure hardness, not to seek it; be sure, however, that the dread of it does not keep you out of any path in which God would have you walk.
