The future belongs to the gritty.
To anyone who knows anything about the Bible, the heart, human psychology, or human history, this is no epiphany.
This is not a revelation.
It’s not prophetic.
It’s simply stating the obvious.
The past belonged to the gritty. The future belongs to them too.
Grit is like a Diamond
Like the heat and pressure which turns carbon into precious stone, the furnace that refines silver, or the fire which purifies gold, the grace-infused power of God turns our trembling hearts into resilient ones.
Grace-inspired grit can cut through anything—temptation, testing, trial, tiredness—and tens of thousands of other kinds of threats, great and small.
Grit is a Long Obedience in the Same Direction
Whether it feels like running at top speed with the wind behind your back, or crawling inch by inch through muddy sludge on a rainy day, grit only knows one direction.
Onward.
There is no turning around.
Like the old songwriter says, “I have decided to follow Jesus. No turning back.”
Grit is the disciples telling Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life” (John 6:68).
Grit is Good
Most of the time, grit feels bad.
But grit is good.
Its work is good.
In the Bible, we call it perseverance, endurance, or pressing on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me (Phil. 3:12).
Grit is not the feeling you have on a Sunday morning—during a rousing sermon, a moving song, or the joyful company of siblings in Christ.
That feeling will fade by lunchtime. It will disappear by the end of the day.
Grit is what you need on Monday morning and Friday night; on long days and lonely nights.
Grit Fights Like a Dog
This grit is what you need when those friends come calling to go to those places and do those things, which you know will feel good only until it begins to feel bad.
You don’t want to go but you go anyway because who else is calling? Where else can you go? What else can you do?
It’s the cycle of temptation, sin, shame, hiding, and self-isolation that started in Eden and cuts across the earth.
Grit fights, to pay the price, to win the prize, that is precious to you.
It is the bloody socks of the football player, whom others could not stop but by slashing their studs at the back of his shin until it breaks his skin.
But he plays to the end, and he plays to win.
Next week, after he’s licked his wounds, he’ll go out to play again.
And he’ll still play to win.
In your struggle against sin, have you resisted to the point of shedding your blood? (Heb. 12:4, 1 Cor. 9:26-27)
Grit is Mission Critical
Being a pastor makes you age a little faster.
It feels like you’ve lived so many more lives than one, and shared in so many more griefs than your own.
As a pastor, I’ve met so many sinners and so many sufferers. I’ve seen so many tears and heard so many confessions.
I know how difficult and disappointing life can be sometimes.
Being a pastor is no different to being human.
The weight on the heart is heavy, the drain on the soul is strong, and the strain on our families is real.
Grit is not optional.
It’s mission-critical.
The Good News About Grit
Where do we get the grit we need?
Here’s some good news.
God does not choose gritty people. He makes people gritty.
If anything, he chooses the least gritty people—the ones most likely to say to sin, “I’ll give you anything you want, just don’t hurt me.”
That’s whom God is most likely to choose—the weak, the poor, the unwanted (1 Cor. 26-29; Luke 5:8, 10).
Because when he turns such people into gritty people, anyone who knew them earlier will say, “How can this be? It can only be the work of God” (Acts 4:13).
Grit is Formed by Gazing
We look to the one who looked to the cross and kept going (Heb. 12:1-2, Ps. 27:4).
He set his face like flint towards Jerusalem (Isa. 50:7, Luke 9:51).
No turning back.
In the garden of testing, he poured out bloody sweat and tears—determined to die, so we can live (Luke 22:44, 1 Pet. 2:22-25).
Whether it was striding through the temple courts in all his glory or crumbling under the weight of a gory cross, his grit knew only one direction.
Onward.
He ran with gritty joy to break the cycle of shame and rapture us into a cyclone of grace that makes us gritty with joy.
We are most gritty when we are most conscious of the gritty grace that set its sights on us and made its home in us.
If there is any reason we will never let up, it’s because he will never let go.
In this new year, in every day, at all times, and in all things, may the gritty grace of God give you the grit you need to run the race set before you and to finish with aplomb (Heb. 12:1-4, 13:5-6).
