In May 2024, I had a dream that speaks to the journey we are on.  We know we are not promised things will be perfect for us as we travel through this life, but He does promise He is with us always.  I pray this dream encourages you, and will continue to, as it has encouraged me.

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The Dream

In the dream, I started driving up a large hill, but the road was very narrow and there were no sides.

When I was getting further up the hill I noticed there was an optical illusion that started to take place with my eyesight because of the height and the sheer drop off.

The road started to have woopsies in it (this is a term I know of from atv riding - it’s like the bumps you would see on a motocross track when there are little hills that the riders go up and over constantly - it got even harder to navigate due to the woopsies). 

All of a sudden when I reached the top there was an explosion of joy like I’ve never experienced before, like it took my breath away and I was shocked by it!  

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Endurance, Character & Hope

For a long time, I struggled with Romans 5:3–4.

 

"Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope."

 

The word character always felt difficult to reconcile with what I was seeing in life.

So often Christians talk about character as though it is something we can observe externally. A person is described as having good character because they appear patient, diligent, self-controlled, humble, or obedient.

Yet I have seen that two people can do exactly the same thing externally while living from completely different sources internally.

One may be walking in dependence on Christ.

The other may be walking in self-effort.

One may be responding to the Spirit.

The other may be responding to fear, pride, duty, or the desire for approval.

To human eyes, they can look identical.

Likewise, there are times when genuine obedience to Christ may appear rebellious or foolish to others. Only God truly sees the heart.

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That left me with a question: if character is primarily about outward behaviour, how does endurance produce it? Endurance might change what people see, but it cannot reveal the source from which a person lives. Only God sees that.

Because of that, I found it difficult to understand what Paul meant when he said endurance produces character.

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Understanding came later as I reflected on the dream.

The dream itself was an encouragement to keep my eyes fixed on Christ and continue the journey, no matter how difficult the road became.

The narrow road, the optical illusion, and the constant whoopsies all reminded me that the journey can be long and difficult.  Sometimes the road becomes increasingly difficult. Sometimes the climb grows steeper rather than easier. Sometimes years can pass with little visible change, and hope itself can become deferred, making the heart sick.

Yet the dream was not drawing my attention to the difficulty of the road. It was encouraging me to keep my eyes fixed on Christ and continue the journey, trusting the One who was with me.

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I think upon this dream quite often and I see more each time.  This time, as I reflected upon it through Romans 5 using the Beloved Bible Study Lens, I began to see something I had missed before.

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The Greek word translated as character is dokimē, a word that carries the idea of something tested and proven genuine. It is not primarily about outward behaviour. It is about authenticity revealed through testing. Suddenly the passage came alive.

Suffering produces endurance.

Endurance produces provenness.

Provenness produces hope.

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​Side note: This does not mean integrity, obedience, and Christlike conduct are unimportant. Christ certainly produces His life in us as we abide in Him. However, Romans 5 began to make more sense when I stopped viewing the passage primarily through the lens of my own character development and started seeing the proven faithfulness of Christ. We will explore that distinction further in the next article.

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Back to the dream...

The road and its whoopsies are not simply obstacles standing between me and joy. They are the very places where the faithfulness of Christ is revealed.

Each difficulty asks a question:

"Can Christ be trusted here too?"

And over time, through joys and disappointments, victories and failures, clarity and confusion, the answer keeps coming back:

"Yes."

Not because I navigate the road perfectly.

Not because I become increasingly impressive.

Not because my behaviour proves anything.

But because Christ remains faithful.

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The whoopsies expose my self-reliance, my assumptions, and my illusions. Yet they also reveal something deeper: the presence of the Beloved walking with me through every rise and dip.

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What emerges is not confidence in myself.

It is confidence in Him.

That is the hope Paul describes.

A hope forged not by escaping hardship but by discovering, again and again, that the Beloved is trustworthy.

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Looking back, I don't see Romans 5 as a promise that suffering will make me a better-performing Christian.

I see it as a promise that on the difficult road of life, endurance reveals what is real.

And what has been proven real, over and over again, is the faithfulness of Christ.

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The road remains narrow.

The whoopsies continue.

But the Beloved remains.

And because He remains, hope grows.

And because hope grows, the joy at the end of the journey can already begin to shape the journey now.