Thought of the Day !!

I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false.
Revelation 2:2 (TNIV)

I am reading about the seven churches in Revelation right now. The first is Ephesus. And the letter that Jesus has John send begins with the words above.

William Barclay notes that Jesus "praises their toil (hard work)" and that in the original Greek the word means to work by giving it all we have. He also suggests that the word endurance (perseverance) means that we not only endure/persevere, but that we do so with glory.

We can be Christians who endure hardships, but do so bitterly. We can be the kind of people who persevere through different types of suffering, but live to complain about them. Or we can be the kind of people who have "courageous gallantry which accepts suffering and hardship and turns them in to grace and glory" according to Barclay.

Which do you want be today?

In the love of Christ,
greg