Years ago, my sons planned a two-day backpacking trip in southern Indiana. They were seventeen and almost twenty, and the trip was my oldest son’s birthday gift to his younger brother.
They planned for weeks. They knew it would be hot, so they packed extra water. They had a route. They knew there was a pond along the trail where they could refill what they carried.
Then they made one decision that changed the trip.
They left the extra water in the car.
Why carry all that weight when there was water ahead?
Except the terrain was much steeper and harder than they expected. The hike took longer. Their water ran out. And they couldn’t find the pond.
The next day my oldest son called me from the top of a hill where he’d managed to get cell service. The joking phone call I expected wasn’t what I got. There was panic in his voice. His brother was severely dehydrated, hallucinating, and struggling to stay awake.
They thought they were less than a mile from the pond.
The car was about ten miles behind them.
But from where they stood, they couldn’t see the pond.
So they turned around.
My oldest son eventually carried his brother and both backpacks much of the way back.
The pond had been there.
They just couldn’t see it from where they were standing.
And because they couldn’t see what was ahead, the road behind them felt safer—even though it was much farther away.
I’ve thought about that day many times since.
Because sometimes the hardest part of moving forward isn’t that we don’t know where we’ve been. It’s that we do.
Behind us is familiar. We know the terrain. We know what happened there. Even when it was difficult, at least we know what we’re walking back toward.
Ahead of us can feel very different.
We may believe God is leading us forward and still reach a hill where we can’t see what comes next.
And that’s often where the temptation to turn around gets strongest.
Paul knew something about leaving things behind.
In Philippians 3, Paul describes everything that once gave him confidence—his heritage, his religious credentials, his obedience to the law, his reputation. If anyone had reason to build an identity around what he had accomplished, Paul did.
And then he says that compared with knowing Christ, none of it could be his confidence anymore.
Later in the chapter he writes:
“Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal…” — Philippians 3:13–14
Paul isn’t pretending his past didn’t happen. He talks about it openly.
But he refuses to let what is behind him determine the direction he travels now.
That’s an important distinction.
There are things behind us that need to be remembered. There are things we need to grieve, learn from, repent of, heal from, or simply acknowledge as part of our story.
Forgetting what is behind doesn’t require denying any of that.
It means the past doesn’t get to become our destination simply because it’s familiar.
Sometimes perseverance looks remarkably ordinary.
We tend to imagine perseverance as something dramatic—great faith in impossible circumstances, enormous courage, unwavering certainty.
Often it looks much smaller than that.
It looks like taking the next faithful step when you still can’t see the pond.
It looks like opening Scripture again when you’re confused.
Praying when you don’t know what to say.
Obeying what God has already made clear while you’re waiting for clarity about what He hasn’t.
Showing up again.
Asking for help.
Refusing to confuse familiar with faithful.
Paul says twice in Philippians 3 that he presses on. He hasn’t arrived. He isn’t spiritually complete. His circumstances aren’t easy. But his direction is settled.
He’s moving toward Christ.
And maybe that’s the question perseverance asks us:
Not, “Can I see everything ahead?”
But, “Which direction am I going?”
There will be hills that distort our view.
There will be moments when what God is doing isn’t obvious and when turning around feels more reasonable than continuing.
There may even be moments when the road behind us looks comforting simply because we’ve already survived it.
But familiar isn’t necessarily safe.
And unseen doesn’t mean absent.
My sons couldn’t see the water they desperately needed.
It was still there.
So when you reach the hill and can’t see very far beyond it, you don’t have to manufacture certainty you don’t have.
You don’t have to pretend you’re fearless.
You don’t even have to know exactly what the rest of the road looks like.
Keep your eyes on Christ.
Take the next faithful step.
And press on.
The Table 
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