Perseverance in another sense can be described as an attitude of commitment, hard work, patience, endurance and bearing difficulties calmly without complain. Attitude is normally related to work and life and it is ones approach to duty. Therefore it is saying the attitude must be one of commitment. And commitment is ones total involvement in a process. Hard work is intelligent dissipation of energy and strength of ones gift, talent, creativity and excellence to get quantified results.

Patience is having the heart to wait until what you desire comes to you. In life situation, it can be related to a friend asking you to wait at a place to receive something of importance. You stood there for a while he did not come. You called his mobile phone intermittently and promised he was coming but still did not turn up. Since you could not do without the item, you kept waiting. Now as to him coming in truth, you seem to be in doubt at this stage but you’re still waiting with the hope that he’ll come and that is the real expression of patience.

Before footballers can ran around the pitch for 90 minutes and beyond without stopping a second to rest, they need to break beyond their tiring limit. This is to ensure they can last the entire duration of the game and conserve a considerable amount of energy in case of extra time. This is one literal explanation of endurance. To test this truth, let you and me as laypersons, try playing football even on a substandard pitch and you’ll realize within 15 minutes that you’re already panting.

Also, when you watch Chinese and kickboxing movies, it is demonstrated how a protagonist trains to meet an antagonist who is very deadly. The protagonist is prepared by the strength of the antagonist and that calls for walking bear foot on sharp stones, hitting hot metals on the stomach, being hit on the stomach randomly with heavy timber logs and tries to block them. All these activities are to prepare him to be well conditioned for the fight and to endure or last the entire period.

Have you ever seen anybody who has lost both parents before and is being adopted by a relative? Some relatives can be cruel by nature but God still decides to send such innocent people under their tutelage to acquire difficult lessons to handle what he will entrust into their hands tomorrow. So some kids go through undue beatings, insults, manhandling and starvation to survive. Not to talk of formal education, they sometimes don’t get it benefit at all. If they do, they go to school with hungry stomachs, walk for long distances and are sacked for nonpayment of fees. Despite all these mistreatment, some of these kids always put on a smile, a sharp contrast to their turmoil and traumatic experiences. That is the other element of perseverance that talks of “bearing difficulties calmly without complain”.

From what we have studied so far, it is then imperative to demonstrate the right attitude in the process of persevering towards a mark. There’s a statement that goes: “attitude determines the portion”. That means, God is not interested in the magnitude or depth of your suffering or challenge but how you go through it. Sometimes when we’re being pinned and squeezed through life, we do not know that it’s God’s way to test our attitude. But this is what an arrogant and proud man will say: “Ah! But the most important thing for me is to go through this thing so it does not matter if I frown whiles going through”. For God, the attitude was wrong so you got the answer correct but the process of getting the answer was wrong so you don’t get the full marks. So it is in life and we must be very mindful.