So what is According to Merriam-Webster dictionary online, endurance means:

 the ability to withstand hardship or adversity

especially : the ability to sustain a prolonged stressful effort or activity Merriam-Webster

That leads to the question about what you are enduring that you would consider hardship, adversity or stressful. Paul was beaten, shipwrecked, put in prison, and bitten by a snake. I haven’t undergone any of that, yet I consider that I am enduring and I would venture to guess that you are, too. I am enduring health issues, changes in my abilities to do tasks, challenges in everyday living in general, and not being able to see family members as often as I would like. But is that really hardship? Probably not. Just minor inconveniences that I whine about because I don’t like challenges that force me to go through them. But, but…IF we endure whatever we face in this life, we have the promise of reigning with Jesus. Do I want to face these daily challenges that cause me to be grumpy sometimes and often in pain? No, but there is a goal that I am moving toward…eternity with Jesus.

There is a second part of the verse that many ignore. IF we deny Jesus, He will deny us. How do we deny someone? Again, using the dictionary, deny is:

  1 to declare (something) to be untrue

2 to refuse to admit or acknowledge (something) Merriam-Webster

Do we say that we truly believe that Jesus is the Son of God, sent to save the world from their sins? Or do we say that there are other ways to get to heaven? Do we refuse to acknowledge that Jesus is Lord because we are so busy trying to be a lord ourselves? That last one is a hard one to confess, but many of us make ourselves into little gods and try to make ourselves happy all the time. News Flash! We were not created to make ourselves happy. That is a benefit of serving God, not our purpose. When Jesus is Lord, we act like it, we show His character in our speech, our choices and the way we behave when no one is looking. Thus we need to always be aware that we are representing Jesus, particularly when we are around non-believers. Perhaps it is a kind of denial when we choose to watch the show that Jesus would never watch due to language, sex or violence. Perhaps it’s in the books we read, the music we listen to. Our denial is not always in our words, but can be in other ways, too. That’s why we need to be careful that we keep Jesus in the forefront of our lives at all times.

Yes, life is hard, so we are all called to endure something. Eternity with our loving Father will be worth all of the self-denial that we choose in order to make Jesus first in a way that others know He is our reason for being.