{"id":6151,"date":"2019-02-17T12:16:30","date_gmt":"2019-02-17T17:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=6151"},"modified":"2019-02-01T12:17:14","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T17:17:14","slug":"elder-ephraim-of-arizona-on-perseverance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=6151","title":{"rendered":"Elder Ephraim of Arizona on Perseverance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cDo not lose your courage, my child. The deprivations we bear are meant to prepare for us the eternal enjoyment of heaven! We knowingly deprive ourselves of the pleasurable things of this life for the love of our Christ. If we wanted to, we could enjoy them freely, but voluntarily we do not accept them so that we may be given the affectionate love of our exceedingly sweet Jesus\u2026 have an immortal and eternal Bridegroom, Who preserves the glory of virginity forever. We have been called to become angels, my beloved daughter, so shouldn\u2019t we deprive ourselves of things pleasurable and sinful? Isn\u2019t it worth depriving ourselves of foul things for Jesus\u2019 divine love? So struggle worthily of your calling with fortitude. The martyrs shed their blood for the love of our Christ<\/p>\n<p>so can\u2019t we resist one loathsome, counterfeit pleasure? Glorify God in your body and in your soul.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; \u2018Counsels from the Holy Mountain\u2019<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-6152\" src=\"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Athos-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Athos-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/Athos.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cDo not lose your courage, my child. The deprivations we bear are meant to prepare for us the eternal enjoyment of heaven! We knowingly deprive ourselves of the pleasurable things [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6151"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6153,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6151\/revisions\/6153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}