Perseverance

“Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”

Romans 5:3-5 NIV

This scripture really touched my heart. How often when things start to get tough and we start to suffer do we turn to God and say, “What did I do to deserve this” or “I really tried to listen to you, but I feel that I didn’t get the point.” So often, we turn to God when times are tough to ask him for guidance and to take away our suffering. The way I take these verses are that it is only through suffering that we can learn perseverance, gain our true charter, and hope so big that we can’t help but be happy.

Wow, that was awesome!

Let’s break down these verses even more. What is perseverance? I grew up in the grange where they always prayed for perseverance. To me perseverance is when you don’t give up. Angela Duckworth would call it “Grit.” The ability to stick with something even when things do go as easily as expected. Faith requires perseverance, being an employee requires perseverance, being the leader requires perseverance, being a parent requires perseverance. I think you get the point, life requires that we have perseverance, or grit. Never giving up is huge. I have been listening regularly to the podcast, “Born to Impact.” These guys are amazing and constantly talk about what it means to have perseverance. They use the analogy of a person who hits a rock 99 times and it never breaks, then he swings the 100th time and the rock breaks open and is full of amazing beauty. If you don’t have perseverance and gave up at swing 99, you would have never found the true treasure.

Let’s move on to character. I consider character to be how we act, and react to every situation that God places in our lives. Our character is formed by the events that happen for us. The way we act on those situations shows our true character. Ill bet that we have been in a situation where our boss was not a a nice guy. Maybe we gave him a reason not to be nice to us, maybe we didn’t. the fact is that we don’t like our current situation. We have the option to allow our character to be one who goes around talking about them behind their backs, or we can bring it up to them and ask how we can fix the situation. The point here is that our character is what makes the difference. How is our character formed? By the situations, God has led us through and our actions during those times. Character is something that can change over time in everyone. We have the ability to grow into the person we are truly supposed to be.

Hope! How would you describe hope? To me Hope is the ability to have faith that things will turn out great. Even in those situations where we KNOW beyond any doubt that it will never work out, having faith that it will work out. Hope is the ability to see the good in others when no one else does. Hope is the light of the world. Hope believes that humanity will take the righteous actions. Hope can be anything you want it to be as long as you believe in it. Hope is knowing that no matter what God has my life and yours under control. All we have to do is sit back, work like heck, and trust that God is guiding the ship in the direction he needs it to go.

The last part of these verses are the hardest for me. They say that it is only through suffering that we can gain all of these things. Why are we so, for lack of better words, dumb, that we have to suffer to gain perspective in this? God knows our path, he knows us before we are even born, he knows us better than we know ourselves.

Prayer

God today we come to you to just say, THANK YOU! Thank you for giving us the ability to change, thank you for giving us perseverance that’s changes our charter and gives us hope. Thank you for everything that you do and everywhere that you guide us to be. God I pray that you help these words to touch someone’s heart and allow them to see Jesus in them. God I pray that you help us to give all glory for everything to you. God thank you for allowing us to suffer so that we may gain all of these awesome traits. Thank you.

Amen

Prayer

Lord, today we come to you with HAPPY hearts.  We are so grateful that you give us the opportunity to change the lives of those around us.  We are grateful that you give us the wisdom to change our lives and the lives of those around us.  And you make it so simple. We can do it with a single smile. God today I would ask that you help us to smile more. The next time we see someone down, help us to smile for them. The next time we are down, help us to remember that you gave us the best gift ever. The ability to know you, your son, and the holy spirit. God, we are so grateful for everything you give us.

We ask all these things in your Precious Son's Name

Amen

A Little More

 The other day I got a call from one of our clients.

I love talking to our clients so I always smile when I answer the phone.

“Hey Dan, one of my drivers is pulled over and they are saying that our permit doesn’t cover what we weigh. Isn’t that why we hire your team to make sure that these things don’t happen!”

My smile immediately vanished.

I was shocked because my team is amazing. and it’s not like them to miss something like 20,000 lbs on a permit.

So, I asked him, “Who have you been working with, and who was the one who called our team to get the permit?” 

To get to the bottom of the problem I needed the details.

They gave me the details.

My next call was to my team. Then after I got the details I got them started on getting new permits to get the problem fixed. I’m a solutions guy, not an excuses guy.

But I NEED to know the real reason why it happened so that we can fix the issue.

My next call was to the driver so that I could see exactly what happened.

I knew he was going to be upset. He was pulled over and they were going to give him a HUGE ticket. I wouldn’t be happy either.

so……

I made sure not to smile when I made the call.  I had a serious look on my face. As we chatted I learned that he was the person who gave his weight to our team. I asked where he got the weights from and how in the world they were off by over 20K lbs!

That’s when he told me that he might have gotten the wrong scale ticket from the weigh station where he originally weighed.

Immediately my heart leapt with joy, this is NOT our fault!

Now to get the problem resolved and get this driver back on the road was my only goal.  I was not going to assign blame or make anyone feel bad. 

Hey, we all make mistakes. I do it multiple times every single day.

The owner of the company shot me a text. I'm getting permits from the big guys. They won’t make these mistakes that cost me time and $$$$$.

No problem.  Let me know if you need anything. We are here to help.

Well……..

After they called the “BIG Guys” they called me about 30 minutes later.

Hey, we can’t get an Idaho permit until Monday. It’s Friday night. And we need to drop this load off tomorrow afternoon.

I told him that I would NOT make any promises.

But my team went to work!

Guess what????

We got the permits that the “BIG Guys” couldn’t get.

My team had the Idaho permit in less than 20 minutes. For the right weight this time.

Here’s the point of all this.

When things don’t go right, smile. I have taught my whole team this.

That right there is how we got the permits. They smiled as they worked and it didn’t take any time at all.

Ok, there might be a little knowledge that went into this too. Lol

Next time you need anything DOT, don’t call the “Big Guys” , call the team who can get it done!

Dan Greer