What does the Bible say about resilience?

“But we glory in tribulation also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience (or endurance); and patience, experience; and experience, hope.” At the very outset, the Christian ought to settle it in his heart to expect a path of tribulation. Justification gives no assurance of an easy earthly path: quite the reverse. But it brings heavenly joy into the midst of the trouble — beauteous testimony to the grace of God! Sorrow and trial become the very sphere of the conquest of eternal joys, which will not be defeated by these mere momentary hindrances. And it is no mere bearing our troubles with submission (more or less), but of rejoicing in them, realizing that they are working steadily to an end of more exceeding blessing for us and glory to God. Tribulation (properly regarded) is the teacher of endurance: endurance soon bears fruit in abundantly valuable experience — valuable in regard to all our relationships of life, whether in making personal decisions, whether in contacts with the saved or the unsaved, in home affairs, in the assembly, in business. In all these things, no one would deny the value of hard-learned experience. And experience is the very nourishment of hope. For true experience teaches the vanity and shallowness of all that is of the world. Such is the very plain recording of the book of Ecclesiastes, written by a man of wisdom declaring the findings of his own experience. But if this is so, how much more fully will experience (rightly regarded, of course), draw the heart toward Heaven and quicken in the soul the hope of glory. The reality of this all who have tasted it know well. Another point, however is this — that while experience teaches the transitoriness of life on earth, it is also always the proof of God's abiding faithfulness, and such realization cannot but stir the hope of the soul to be eternally in His presence.

This obviously cuts across the natural course of things — "glory in tribulations"? Yes, because we know that tribulation is used to form us as we go through it in communion with God. The moral quality of "patience" (endurance) is acquired in the face of trial. We are morally strengthened to stand against the storm just as the tree bending to the wind strikes its roots deeper. This endurance works experience, for we are brought to the conscious knowledge of the faithfulness and support of God. We learn to distrust ourselves, for we are just as incapable of sustaining ourselves in the path of faith as we were of justifying ourselves. So we learn God when things are seemingly against us. Blessed experience that gives us to trust Him unreservedly!

We have only noticed so far one side of the matter. The other side is concerned with the wonderful results, with the way in which the surpassing excellence of the power of God was displayed in and by means of these things. Though circumstances were continually against him yet he was not distressed, not in despair, not forsaken, not destroyed. Obviously a sustaining power was working in him which counteracted all that was working against him. He was rather like one of those self-righting lifeboats, pounded by the stormy seas and even overturned, which nevertheless comes up, the right side up, when the thundering billows have passed. It was indeed the power of the divine life in Paul that accomplished this.

Tribulations are not in themselves pleasant but grievous, yet they help to set in motion a whole sequence of things which are most excellent and blessed — patience, experience, hope, the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Tribulations, to the believer, have become a set of spiritual gymnastics which greatly promote the development of his spiritual constitution. Instead of being against us they are turned into a source of profit. What a triumph of the grace of God this is!

Nevertheless, God intends that the tribulation we may pass through shall turn to our spiritual blessing. Therefore, the Apostle adds, "We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation works endurance". He does not suggest that we glory in tribulation as such, but because it works to our spiritual advantage. Tribulation leads to endurance. In the light of what is coming we learn to endure what is present. Our Lord has been before us in this path. Walking in the light of the glory that was before Him, He endured the trials He had to meet; as we read, "Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross despising the shame"; and again we read, He "endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself". Truly, in His case, the trial drew forth the perfection of the endurance that He had; in ours we have to learn endurance. Rejoicing in hope of the glory we, too, shall be able to endure in the midst of tribulations. Losing sight of the glory we shall be in danger, in the presence of trial of giving up, rather than enduring.

(Vv. 2-4). The Apostle commences by encouraging us to rejoice in the trials that become the occasion of developing the practical life of godliness. Firstly, he tells us that trials test and prove the reality of our faith. Secondly, they are a means used by God to develop patience, or endurance. Thirdly, if patience is allowed to do its work, it will lead to a well-balanced Christian life, in which our own wills are refused and God's will is accomplished. For this we must “let patience have her perfect work.” The work of patience is to break down our self-confidence and self-will and teach us that, apart from God, we can do nothing. When patience has had her perfect work, the soul will show its submission to God in trial by bowing to what God allows and waiting for the Lord. “It is good that one should both wait, and that in silence, for the salvation of Jehovah” (Lam. 3:26 N.Tn.).

(Vv. 8-10). The Apostle then refers to the severe trials he had passed through in Asia. The pressure that came upon him was beyond human power to meet; indeed he had despaired of life. Nevertheless, he found that no trial, no opposition, the Christian has to meet is beyond the sustaining power of God. The Apostle may despair of life, but he does not despair of God. If even faced with death, and like the Master, a violent death at the hands of wicked men, yet God is stronger than death. Thus in his great trials he had learned his own weakness and God's almighty power, in order that he should not trust in himself but in God Who raises the dead. Thus, looking back he can say, God has delivered; looking around he can say, God "doth deliver," and looking on he can say, God "will yet deliver." And what Paul could say in his great trials, it is the privilege of the simplest believer to say with like trust in God.

What three little words could be more blessedly descriptive of the Christian than these I not "faint, and sitting down;" "not faint, and giving up;" but, "faint, yet pursuing." We have to do with Him who "giveth power to the faint." (Isa. 40:29.) "To them that have no might He increaseth strength." It is a blessed use to make of our faintness and weariness, that of drawing out of the fulness of the supply of grace and strength in Christ. It is said, "Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might;" but to whom? To the one who has no strength in himself, who would give up his course if strength were not supplied to him. One victory achieved, the conflict goes on afresh. Do we find ourselves fainting in spirit? Still let us go on; for our God giveth strength to the weak. We like not this trial of faith. It is very painful, doubtless, to feel day after day our own weakness. We want to feel that the battle is over; but let us remember that now is our time of war. We are called on to fight "as good soldiers of Jesus Christ," and that in a daily round of conflicts. Today there has been sufficient grace and sufficient evil, and tomorrow there will be sufficient grace and sufficient evil. What we need is to live day by day on God. He is faithful, and will supply strength according to the occasion and need. The Church will not be at rest till the Lord comes. But weakness ought to be no hindrance to our going forward - "faint, yet pursuing." It is a sad thing to be a spiritual sluggard - for a saint, like a door on its hinges, never to get off himself. The moment a person has learnt to renounce himself, he goes forward. Were felt weakness a reason for standing still, who so weak as Gideon?

How He values those who do so, both old and young. They are spoken of as His flock in this very chapter, which describes the majesty and might of God so magnificently. He feeds them as a shepherd, and gathers the lambs with His arm, carrying them in His bosom; gently leading those that are with young. With what confidence then we may WAIT UPON HIM. His mind and strength are to be ours. We thus change our strength.

The youth who trusts merely in his own vigour faints and grows weary. The young man who seems so tireless in his natural energy shall fall. But those that wait upon God find strength unfailing. Nature fails, but God fails not. Weariness and fainting are unknown to Him; and it is He who gives strength to those that look to Him alone; so that they may rise above the distractions of this world; or better still, run through them without any weariness; or still better, walk in quietness with God in spite of them, and not faint (v. 31). There it is:—Waiting and its consequences;—mounting up, running and walking in new strength from God! Oh, may my soul know this change of strength in an increasing measure! Therefore will I say to my soul: “Wait on the Lord: be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart; wait, I say, on the Lord.”

Nor is this all. "We glory (verse 3) in tribulations also." The prospect of the saint is glory. His actual condition is tribulation. "Through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22). "In the world ye shall have tribulation," etc. (John 16:33). In some shape tribulation must be felt and known by the believer whilst in, and because he is in, the world. But no present sorrow can reach so deep as to touch with defilement or with bitterness the springs of God's love in Christ. Heaviness may be a portion of Christian experience here, but the power of the Holy Ghost as the Comforter is shown in raising the inner man above the stress of present trial by the revelation of the love of Christ. He is the Spirit of truth; and therefore He feeds the soul, not on evanescent fancies, but on the sincere milk of the word. But that word is the revelation of God in His ways. Thus the heart of faith, nourished by the truth of God, knows the way of God, and thus can pass through the dark experiences of actual tribulation, by the sustaining power of a knowledge which makes every special circumstance of trial turn to the furtherance of the soul's blessing, in the remembrance of the end to which all these things are conducing. "Knowing that tribulation works patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope."

Patience is an effect, not a cause; though producing, in its turn, its own results. It is wrought out through suffering. Tribulation of some kind must be passed through, for the soul to know its dependence on God as the God of patience and of hope. The believer knows this; and often feels, in the absence of trial, a spiritual lassitude, which real tribulation seldom fails to remove, by throwing the soul more immediately and more consciously upon God. It is written of the Holy One Himself, whose meat and whose drink it was to do the will of the Father, that "He learned obedience by the things which He suffered" (Heb. 5:8). The believer, indeed, often needs some special affliction as a means of teaching him the lesson of patience. What Jesus learned in the way of perfect devotedness to the Father's will, we have too often to learn in the way of chastisement, because of the waywardness of our path. But the effect of the lesson of patience, however learnt, is experience, or proof (dokime). The patient waiting of the tried spirit upon God, brings into the soul a richer experience of what God really is, as the fountain of living waters — the eternal refreshment of the wearied soul. Especially there is made a practical discovery of the sufficiency of the grace of Christ (2 Cor. 12:9; Phil. 4:3), through the process of soul-trial and exercise of spirit produced by the endurance of tribulation. There is, moreover, a ripening of the mind in the wisdom of the Lord's ways (Prov. 8:34; Ps. 119 passim). Where tribulation is borne with God, all turns to blessing. The Lord's strength is proved as the soul's stay, and His joy becomes our strength.