An Endurance Racing Life

As you endure, God reassembles the pieces of your life into a beautiful whole.

He wasn’t used to losing, and he didn’t like losing. Certainly, he didn’t want to lose to them. Not after they had humiliated him in front of the world. So Henry Ford II, “The Deuce,” grandson and heir of Henry Ford’s automotive empire, decided to go racing. Specifically, he wanted to win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the most prestigious endurance race in the world. And he wanted to defeat Ferrari, especially after Ferrari had humiliated and played Ford for a fool in a business negotiation. Ford recruited an American racing legend, Carroll Shelby, who had won Le Mans a decade and a half before. Shelby told Ford that you can’t win Le Mans with speed alone. You can’t just build a car that is fast. You need a car that will last. Victory at Le Mans requires endurance.

So too your life. The Bible calls your life a “race,” and this race is an endurance race. You must last until the waving of the flag patterned with black and white squares. For Ford, building an endurance racer required engineering and rigorous testing. Likewise, for us, building an enduring life requires all kinds of testing, or “various trials.” That’s what James tells us. And enduring in faith results in something much better than a win at Le Mans. As you endure, God reassembles the pieces of your life into a beautiful whole.

Here’s how James says it.

Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing. (James 1:2-4)

The word testing in this text refers to “the process of refining silver or gold….The difficulties of life are intended by God to refine our faith: heating it in the crucible of suffering so that impurities might be refined away and so that it might become more pure and valuable before the Lord” (to quote scholar Douglas Moo). In other words, to get the most out of our testing, we have to know that the testing is good for us.

After middle school graduation, I was at a friend’s house for a party. This friend had invited one of our teachers to attend. As young teenage kids do, we were waxing eloquently in our wisdom about all sorts of things. We especially lamented the existence of final exams, which we had just completed. We all agreed that no one needed final exams. “I either know the material or I don’t,” said one kid. “A final doesn’t accomplish anything.” Awhile later as that teacher was preparing to leave the party, he was saying goodbye. On the way out, he pointed to that kid, “And remember: tests are good for you.” James points to us and says the same: tests are good for you. You can rejoice in testing because of what testing produces. You can joyfully sing the old praise chorus, “Refiner’s fire…my heart’s one desire is to be holy…”

Testing produces the holy result of endurance. Endurance relates closely to hope. Hope, however, focuses more on the future, while endurance focuses on the present (as another biblical scholar has pointed out). Let me give you an example. Last summer, our family was driving on a long road trip, and we wanted to push through between stops. We looked at the next stop we wanted to make, and our expected remaining mileage. The stop was 100 miles away and our distance to empty said 118 miles. We had enough gas to make it, but not by much. As we got closer and our gas light blinked on, and we felt a little nervous. The gas station was our hope, and we were hoping to make that future destination. As we looked at our hope on the map, we also endured dwindling of our fuel in the moment. We checked our tank, our distance to empty. Hope looks forward to the certainty of the gas station, while endurance looks at the fuel tank in the present as it presses on to make the destination.

The Bible calls us to endure all over the place. Jesus talked about it. Peter talked about it, and Paul the apostle picked up on this theme, too:

And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. (Romans 5:3-5)

As our family endured the “trial” of the narrow gap between an empty fuel tank and the distance to our destination, we trusted that our gauge was accurate. We had tested our gauge before. We knew we could take it to “0 Miles Remaining” and still have enough left to finish the journey.

We endure the testing of our faith, knowing that God gives—and is—enough fuel for us to make it through. We learn that as we endure. We learn to trust our spiritual fuel gauge. Then when we’re terrified that we don’t have enough in the tank to make it, we can trust God’s word to us that he will provide what we need. We trust, even and especially when we consider the difficult consequences of running out of gas. We learn to take God at his word: if God says we have enough in the tank, then we trust him that we do. And he does promise to provide us with everything we need for life and godliness. He promises to stick with us. To fill our tank. To be the fill of our tank.

So we rejoice. We know that God is using whatever test we’re taking right now to fortify and fill our tank for the future. We know that it’s producing Christian maturity. We look forward at the destination, we look at our fuel gauge, and we endure.

So maybe it’s time for you to be like Henry Ford II. Maybe it’s time to go racing.