Home of the Bible Cartoons Blog… articles, thoughts, observations & revelations recorded as I travel the peculiar pathway of a Bible cartoonist.
If you would like to subscribe to BC blogs, click on the links below:
Click here to subscribe to BC blog (RSS feed)
If you would like to preview older blogs click on the logo below:
Scroll down to see the latest two blog entries.
Suddenly perseverance is needed!
Posted 23 Sep 2026
An interesting co-incidence just occurred. I have been getting a bit down due to an ear/hearing problem. My in-laws are suffering with ill health. My wife has encountered a difficult, stressful couple of weeks at work, etc. During all this I/we have been praying for the Lord God’s help, but nothing seems to have changed or improved very much.
When that happens, I admit I get a bit cross & despondent with God, as I figure He is all-powerful, and could do something to improve the situation, if only He chose too. This is an on-going struggle I have between faith and doubt. Maybe most Christians face this? I don’t know.
Anyway, I have just read the latest devotional from Justin Camp called “WiRE for Men”, which is a free Christian email devotional designed to help busy men build spiritual resilience and integrate their faith into daily life.
Below is the devotional, with my realisations written afterwards.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Want More Persevere(ability)?
“Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour”—1 Peter 5:8
The ability to persevere—to remain strong and steadfast in the face of difficulties and delays and distractions—is a fundamental skill, necessary for any man [or woman] choosing to devote himself to our King, Jesus Christ. He showed us how in the wilderness and against the temptations that followed (Matthew 4:1-11). Like him, we too must bear up against the pressures of the world, and not only for a while, but until the very end of our days. Though any one trial or temptation may be short lived, there’s always something out there capable of our destruction.
Preparedness is paramount. You see, when we’re unprepared and trouble comes (at work, in our relationships, our finances, our health) it takes us down: into anxiety, anger, bitterness, despondency, depression, isolation. When we’re unprepared and temptations come (material, carnal, moral) they too take us down: away from God and into sin. Compounding our lack of preparedness, the enemy is always quick with interference and misinformation.
[The Devil will tell you…]
“You won’t make it.”
“This’ll be long and difficult . . . too long, too difficult for you.”
“You’re alone, forgotten.”
“You won’t have strength enough to persevere.”
“You should just give-up/give-in now, and avoid the grief of waiting, just to give later.”
Okay, so what do we do?
Perseverance isn’t innate; it’s learned. All of us can do it if we train. So, brother, manufacture some pressure and train yourself. Push your limits, physically, mentally, spiritually: climb a tough summit; tackle a hike of many miles; fast for a period of days; turn devices off and embrace quiet and solitude and prayer for an uncomfortable period. Remember, God designed you for perseverance. So, by training, you’ll simply learn what you’re made of (plus you’ll expose the lies of the enemy). It doesn’t take much to learn a whole lot about yourself.
————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
After I read the above devotional, it suddenly dawned on me that the Lord God allows these difficult times to come into my/our lives, not because He doesn’t love us, or care about us, but because He wants us to develop characteristics identical to those of Jesus, in this particular case, Perseverance.
I believe that the sneaky, nasty Devil does indeed suggest (into my imagination) that God is withholding His love, or assistance, when we encounter troubles. He does indeed insinuate into my mind “If God loved you He would help you, so if He doesn’t help you that must mean He doesn’t love you”.
I have just realised that the exact opposite is indeed true: God loves me/us very, very much… so much so, that He wants us to develop the kind of fighting perseverance that Jesus had when He was on earth. And as Justin Camp explains in his WiRE devotional above, perseverance doesn’t just get gifted to me/us, we have to develop it; it is learned, by experience, by exposure to trials and difficult times. When we encounter such troublesome issues and events in our lives, we can either complain about it (which I have been in the habit of doing!) OR we can realise that this is an opportunity for us to flex our “perseverance muscles” and GROW, indeed, in my case, to grow up!
This realisation puts a completely different “face” on my/our experiences. Instead of seeing a mean God who doesn’t want to help me/us, now I see a very kind, loving heavenly Father, who wants me/us to grow in character (in this instance Perseverance), and that the only way to do that properly is to expose me/us to stimuli/situations which stretch me/us and causes the very growth development and character strength we and God, wants us to have.
I also see just how nasty, two-faced and horrible the Devil really is. He twists our thoughts around and tries to poison our relationship with God. And unless I/we realise that, he may very well succeed. Praise be to God that He provides Godly men like Justin Camp, who write the right words, at the right time, to help us/me discover the truth about God, & about the Devil.
Bible reference & commentary regarding Perseverance
Romans 5:3-5 (MSG)
3 There’s more to come: We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles, because we know how troubles can develop passionate patience in us, 4 and how that patience in turn forges the tempered steel of virtue, keeping us alert for whatever God will do next. 5 In alert expectancy such as this, we’re never left feeling shortchanged. Quite the contrary—we can’t round up enough containers to hold everything God generously pours into our lives through the Holy Spirit!
Romans 5:1-5 (ANIV)
1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. 3 Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; 4 perseverance, character; and character, hope. 5 And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.
Progressions like this one (starting with troubles/tribulations/sufferings, endurance/perseverance, character, & ending with hope) represent a special literary and rhetorical form called concatenation, also found in other texts. Each step builds directly upon the previous result, turning painful experiences into spiritual maturity. Christians can rejoice in hardships not because pain is good itself, but because of the positive spiritual outcome it creates. The final outcome “hope” does not disappoint because God’s love fills the believer’s heart through the Holy Spirit.
“Believers can enjoy the peace with God that has been achieved and the glorious future in God’s presence that awaits them. But how should they react to the experiences of life that are often adverse and difficult? They are to rejoice in their sufferings. The word “rejoice” is kauchōmetha, the same word in verse 2. “Sufferings” is thlipsesin, “afflictions, distresses, pressures.” James wrote along the same line: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds” (James 1:2). This is more than mere Stoic endurance of troubles, even though endurance or steadfastness is the first result in a chain-reaction outgrowth from distress. This is spiritual glorying in afflictions because of having come to know (from oida, “to know by intuition or perception”) that the end product of this chain reaction (that begins with distress) is hope. Suffering brings about perseverance (hypomonēn, “steadfastness,” the ability to remain under difficulties without giving in; cf. Rom. 15:5-6; James 1:3-4). Only a believer who has faced distress can develop steadfastness. That in turn develops character (dokimēn [“proof”] has here the idea of “proven character”), which in turn results in hope. As believers suffer, they develop steadfastness; that quality deepens their character; and a deepened, tested character results in hope (i.e., confidence) that God will see them through.”
[Source: Bible Knowledge Commentary]
I have italicised the part of the commentary above that says “Only a believer who has faced distress can develop steadfastness.” That is the reason the Lord God allows us to experience difficulties, trails, tribulations, worries, etc.. that in doing so we might develop this perseverance/steadfastness, leading to Christian hope.
Hope defined the wrong way & the right (Christian) way!
The ordinary, western definition of the word “hope” often acts as a mere wish, desire, or optimism where the final result remains unknown and uncertain. It fluctuates based on changing situations, human effort, or random luck. It carries inherent doubt, personal bias, and the possibility of disappointment… NOT so Christian hope!
The word “hope” in the Bible is NOT that defined above, thank God! The Christian meaning of the word “hope” is a confident expectation: Biblical hope is defined as a strong, assured anticipation of what God has promised will come to pass. It contains a moral certainty: it functions as an anchor for the soul because it relies on the unchanging faithfulness and past performance of God rather than on human limits. It includes a theological virtue: alongside faith and love, it is considered an enduring spiritual gift centred on Jesus Christ, eternal life, and the resurrection. “Hope” means active endurance: rather than passive wishing or escapism, Christian hope inspires perseverance through suffering and gives emotional stability in difficult times.
Comments
Comments are turned off for this article
Customer statistics that excite me!
Posted 11 Sep 2026
I quite like working out statistics (well, somebody has to!) especially as they pertain to Bible Cartoon sales. Recently I created an excel formula to calculate which customer had the longest time delay between their first purchase of a Bible Cartoon and their second. I knew this delay might be measured in months, or possibly some years. Guess what the longest time delay turned out to be? 12 years and 2 months/ between 1st and 2nd sale, by a Scottish man. Amazing!
Further analysis revealed that 18 customers took between 5-10 years to return to buy something, whilst 30 customers returned after a “mere” 3-5 years! But putting that into context, all these customers amount to 1.66% of all customers, so that the vast majority come back to buy something a lot more quickly than these slow coaches!
I also worked out the percentage ratio of customers who buy Bible Cartoons, and never return to buy again, versus those that do return for 1 or more times. It turns out that nearly 74% of first time buyers return to buy a second time. That is wonderful!
The number of customers who return to buy a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc time decreases, as you would expect. Even so, I am delighted to say that nearly 100 customers have returned 10 times to purchase Bible Cartoons from me. 45 customers have returned 20 times. 22 customers have returned 30 times…
… so what is the maximum number of times that 2 customers have returned to buy Bible Cartoons from me?… 2 people tie for first place (drum roll please)…a staggering 67 times! The first of these mega-stars is a wonderful man from Northern Ireland, who has bought 195 Bible Cartoons over the course of 15 years.
And the top purchaser (by numbers of BC’s sold) is a man from New Zealand, who has bought 208 Bible Cartoons, over the course of 6 years.
All in all pretty amazing stuff, for which I am very, very grateful, most especially to the Lord God, who handles all my marketing & sends new & returning customers my way all the time!
All this talk of success reminds me: There are only 2 secrets to success in this life, 1: never reveal everything you know…
Comments
Comments are turned off for this article
Go to Blog Archive page
