This month, our character focus is Endurance. The operational definition of endurance is “the inward strength to withstand stress to accomplish God’s best.”

While your physical strength allows you to do heavy lifting and labor for the strenuous tasks you have, your inner strength enables you to keep going when faced with challenges that cannot be overcome by physical might alone. Such hardships may include a prolonged illness, ridicule by friends, the loss of a loved one, or difficulty focusing on a tiresome task.

Though sometimes hard to understand, all that God allows has been filtered through His loving hands for your good and His greater purpose. As Job declared, “But he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10).

God is the source of the inward strength needed for endurance. He has an inexhaustible supply, but you must tap into that source. Discouragement will distract you from drawing from your “endurance tank.” However, like King David, you can take that discouragement to the Lord and rely on Him to renew your inner strength: “And David was greatly distressed . . . because the soul of all the people was grieved . . . but David encouraged himself in the Lord his God” (I Samuel 30:6).