Florence Chadwick was one tough girl. She was the first woman to swim the English Channel both ways. In 1952 she decided to swim from Catalina Island to the California Coast, a distance of about 26 miles.

The day she planned to do the swim, it was cold and foggy. She couldn’t see more than fifteen feet in front of her, but she jumped in the water anyway. She swam for fifteen hours, but after all that time in the water, she still couldn’t see the coast. There were chase boats following her, and they told her it couldn’t be far to her goal. But she swim any more.

They pulled her into one of the boats. They took off for the shore, and made it there in just a few minutes. As it turned out, Florence was less than half a mile from the coast when she quit. The next day at a news conference, she said, “I think that if I could have seen the shore I would have made it.”

When you can see good things in front of you, you can almost always keep going. Or, as Paul said it, you can “continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard” (Col 1:23). In other words, when you have the hope of the gospel in front of you, you can keep continuing in the marathon swim of faith, because you’ll be stable and steadfast.

So what kind of hope will the gospel give you?

The hope of the gospel is that you’re justified. “Those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified” (Rom 8:30). So you don’t need to keep trying to measure up. You don’t need to measure up to all the successful students in your school: the brainiacs who get an A+ on every test, the jocks who letter in 19 different sports, the well-rounded kids who are in 48 different extra-curricular activities.

You don’t need to measure up to all the successful people at your work. All the people who get promotions and awards and trips to the mainland while you keep slaving away with nothing to show for it. You don’t need to measure up to all the successful moms in your play group, with all their successful kids who started walking and reading and quoting Shakespeare before they made 1 year old. You can be stable and steadfast.

The hope of the gospel is that you cannot be condemned. By anyone. “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies” (Rom 8:33). So you don’t need to beat yourself up over your mistakes in the past. You don’t need to feel pressure to fit in with the right crowd. You don’t need to be a people-pleaser. You don’t need to compromise your standards to make your boss happy. You can be stable and steadfast.

The hope of the gospel is that God won’t let you go. “I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39). So you don’t need to get worried if you’re going through a dry season in your relationship with God. You don’t have to do spiritual gymnastics to try to bring back that lovin’ feeling.

Also, you don’t have to be terrified about your kids walking away from the faith. If they’ve been justified, even if they do walk away for a while, nothing can separate them from his love. So you can be stable and steadfast.

The hope of the gospel is that you’ll be resurrected. “He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies” (Rom 8:11). So you don’t need to worry so much about what might happen to you. You don’t need to worry so much about preserving your standard of living — you know it will be way better in the future. You don’t need to worry so much about your body — you don’t need to make your whole life revolve around fitting into the right jeans. You can be stable and steadfast.

The hope of the gospel allows us to ignore the distractions around us on our cold, foggy swim of faith – across rough waters and through powerful currents. The gospel empowers us to continue in faith. Simply continuing might not sound very exciting, but it’s necessary to achieve anything worthwhile in life.

Just ask Florence Chadwick.