On a granite windowsill in a French tower prison, an eighteen-year-old Huguenot named Marie Durand carved a single word with a piece of iron: endure. She would spend thirty-eight years in that cell rather than recant her faith, leading Bible studies and nursing the sick among her fellow prisoners the entire time. Stephen Davey tells her story to introduce the fourth of Peter's seven spiritual supplements in 2 Peter 1:6, a word once used for swords built to withstand the blows of battle, translated here as steadfastness. Davey walks through Job in the ashes, still expecting his Redeemer, and Hudson Taylor's fifty years of hardship on the mission field, arguing that endurance isn't gritted-teeth survival but perseverance soaked in hope. He closes with an old fable about two frogs trapped in a bowl of cream, one who gives up and drowns, and one who keeps swimming until the cream turns to butter beneath him. Keep swimming, Davey says. That's the whole sermon in two words.
Keep Swimming!
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