Ling Zhang
- Feb 18, 2023
- 5 min read

Faith Is Determination and Perseverance

Updated: Feb 25, 2023

Break Through External Obstacles (4-4)

For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise - Hebrews 10:36

One day, a young boy with excitement went to his music teacher. He loved singing so much and dreamed of becoming a great singer. After singing once, the teacher immediately told him, “You are hopeless… you can never become a great singer.” It crushed the boy’s excitement and a blow on his dream!

Before J.K. Rowling’s novel, Harry Potter, became popular, it was rejected twelve times. It took her many years of determination and perseverance for the masterpiece to shine.

To reach your glorious promised land, you have to take a trail less traveled, full of obstacles, dangers, trials, challenges and failures.

Is your dream slapped cruelly or are you experiencing rejection one followed another now?

You are on the journey to Grow to Your Fullest, Step 3, the series of Breaking through External Obstacles. In the last post, we talked the third of the Six Elements of Faith, Faith is taking risk and being discerning to measure risk and maximize your success odds. Today, let’s discuss the fourth element - Faith is Determination and Perseverance to learn the power of a stubborn will and the law of grit to success.

>> Refer Faith Is Holding on the Vision, Faith Is Confronting Brutal Facts

The fourth strategy for conquering barriers on our journey is determination and perseverance. Taking risk is not a one-time event. It’s usually a series of repeated, reoccurring actions. We must have a strong will and keep going with perseverance to finish all the required tasks. We must conquer all barriers one by one until we arrive at the destination.

I love to boast about the glory of perseverance. I treasure the traits of perseverance in particular because it’s usually our perseverance that leads us to be our best. It’s the persistence that makes people successful. It is the key to achieving goals.

I love quote by Walker Elliot, Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after the other. We also heard “falling down seven times and standing up eight.” Few people achieve anything great without first overcoming some obstacles. That’s the power of an unyielding spirit.

>> Refer Six Steps to Build Your Self-Confidence, The Power of Confidence

We all know Disney World, a place many kids dream of going to. Do you know how Walt Disney built the empire? As a young man, Walt Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star News because he was thought lack creativity. In 1921, he went on to form an animation company called Laugh-O-Gram Studio. He made a deal with a New York distributor, and when the distributor went out of business, Disney was forced to shut Laugh-O-Gram down. He could barely pay his rent and survived on dog food at the time. Broke but not defeated, Disney spent his last few dollars on buying a train ticket and heading for Hollywood. Once he was there, what amazed him more was that the big trouble threw at him mercilessly and unexpected before other troubles were over. In 1926, Disney invented a cartoon character named Oswald the Rabbit. When he attempted to negotiate a better deal with Universal Studios, the cartoon’s distributor, Disney discovered that Universal had secretly patented the Oswald character. Universal even hired Disney’s artists away from him and continued the cartoon without Disney’s input and without paying him. That wasn’t enough. Disney also struggled to release some of his now-classic films. He was told Mickey Mouse would fail because the mouse would terrify women. Distributors rejected The Three Little Pigs, saying it needed more characters. Pinocchio was shut down during production and Disney had to rewrite the entire storyline. Other films, like Pollyanna and Fantasia, were misunderstood by audiences at the time of their release, and only became favorites later on.

Disney showed the greatest perseverance when he tried to make the book Mary Poppins into a film. In 1944, Disney decided to adapt the Pamela Travers’s novel into a screenplay. However, Travers had absolutely no interest in selling Mary Poppins to Hollywood. To win her over, Disney visited Travers at her England home repeatedly for the next sixteen years. After the sixteen-year persuasion, Travers was overcome by Disney’s vision for the film, and finally gave him permission to bring Mary Poppins to the big screen. The result is a timeless classic.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Matthew 7:7)

Let’s continue the story of the young boy at the beginning; he did not believe in his teacher, with his mother’s support and encouragement, he pressed on to chase his dream and work hard on learning and practicing singing. After many years, he became one of the greatest singers all the time. His name is Enrico Caruso.

Jesus was determinate to die for us though he knew the road he would walk mercilessly torturous. From that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter did not want it happen. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you!" Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns." (Matthew 16:21-23 states)

In order to make His mission come true, Jesus decided to take a road that no one traveled and no one can travel without His support. And He showed greatest perseverance in the process. No matter how people beat him and blame him, he kept silence. Even at the end, he was on cross and he was still praying for those who were torturing him, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23:34) Jesus made his vision come true so all believe in Him gain the eternal life through him.

If Disney made it, Enrico made it, Rowling made it, so can you make your dream come true with God's support, determination, and perseverance Faith is about to believe in God and His work through you. “For you have need of endurance, so that after you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise.” (Hebrews 10:36)

Before any success, there are always frustrations and countless failures. If you choose to give up, you give up the opportunity of success. The distance to success becomes shorter and shorter as you try more and fail more. That is the law of probability for success. If only there is 1% chance to win, if you try 1000 times, the chance you win at least once is 99.99%, that’s the math of success! What if Thomas Edison had given up on his idea for a light bulb after it failed 2,000 times?

Any successful person in human history has no more luck than others but has only one difference than ordinary people, they have the spirit of determination, persistence, perseverance and endurance. It’s the four factors that truly separate people who have dreams from those who achieve their dreams

In the next post, I will introduce the fifth element of faith – Faith is focus and stickiness so you learn the power of focus.

May you grow to your fullest!

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