The life of the child of God is to be marked by a constant presence of spiritual "grit," to be a conduit of what Chambers called "spiritual tenacity." Spiritual tenacity is one of the sides on the coin of faith. The first side is spiritual trust, i.e., banking all on God and His character. The second side is spiritual tenacity, i.e., a stubborn persistence of banking your all on God and His character when everything around you says that God is untrustworthy. If spiritual trust is step one, spiritual tenacity is steps 2 through whenever. Many of us have spiritual trust; few have spiritual tenacity.
This is a problem with modern Christendom (one of many). We all see faith as spiritual trust, but we leave out the part about spiritual tenacity. We will gladly trust God and believe Him in the high moment when His presence has touched us; but what about in the demon-possessed valley, where "a horror of darkness" falls upon us, and the slow humdrum pounding of this world wears us down? This is why modern Christians are so useless. They are in it for the high moments and not the long haul, and faith is meant for both: it takes us to the high moments and keeps that moment alive when we go down to the depths.
Spiritual tenacity is a necessary part of faith because we live inside time while God lives outside of it (see II Peter 3:8). God sees past, present and future as one whole; His purposes are already complete from His perspective. We, however, are bound (for now) to the temporal; we see events as they come. God's purposes can seem far off, or even nonexistent, which is why we need our spiritual trust augmented with spiritual tenacity, a stubborn refusal to believe that God will not come through in the end. The enemy loves to hit us here. They love to slowly chip away at us with the horrid thought that somehow, someway, God will not come through in the end. When that thought takes hold, and we have no spiritual tenacity, then panic replaces trust and we try to grasp and control our circumstances; but in doing so we let go of God, let go of life, and therefore unleash death. Spiritual tenacity would keep us from making such mistakes.
Spiritual trust is believing; spiritual tenacity is a continuous believing, a stubborn faith, the only stubborn trait we should possess. This is how we are "established," how we abide, how we weather and do not wither. "If ye will not believe, surely ye shall not be established." Our faith in God needs to have the trust to bank on Him and the tenacity to keep going when everything seems to make that trust look ill placed. The spiritually trusting and tenacious life, the life of faith, the life focused and fixed on God, can never be worn down. It is unconquerable, for it is the life of God manifested in a person (Romans 8:37), it is, in effect, the seeing of things from God's untemporal perspective: "I don't care what so-and-so says or does, or what this or that circumstance seems, I know that God will come through."
"Thus saith the Lord God..." The word of God comes, faith is ignited afresh and your will is given the power to believe and keep on believing, i.e., be established. Trust and tenacity are this establishment; if you lack one, then you are not truly believing, and you will falter. There are too many (as Chambers calls them) "limp jellyfish" today. There is plenty of spiritual trust (how many times have we heard that God loves us and has only the best planned for us?), but no tenacity, no grit, no "spiritual pluck." The life of faith is not merely trusting God; it is tenaciously trusting God. If your faith has no tenacity, then it will sink beneath the winds and waves.
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