The endurance here spoken of by the Savior requires the continual keeping of the commandments, resisting temptations, repenting of our sins, exercising faith in Christ, rendering service, being prayerful, and loving God and our fellowmen. Many scriptures in all of the standard works add words such as always or continually to these gospel requirements (see Luke 18:1; Acts 6:4; D&C 10:5).
Endurance that leads one to exaltation requires continual faith and faithfulness rather than sporadic spirituality and service. Fervency without frequency does not yield the same strength to endure to the end as does constancy and consistency, in gospel living. (See 2 Nephi 31:20; D&C 14:7; see also Brent L. Top, Strength to Endure, pp. 79-130.)
“For Unto Him That Endureth to the End Will I Give Eternal Life”
Some may think of enduring to the end in terms of “hanging on” or “putting up with” or “sticking it out.” Such terms have little in common with the divine concept of “enduring to the end.” Exaltation is not bestowed upon those who can “hang on” the longest or “put up with” the most tribulation in life.
It is a reward to those who have endured in faith, obedience, and continual valiance amidst the storms of life and the fiery darts of the adversary. “Patient endurance is to be distinguished from merely being “acted upon,” Elder Neal A. Maxwell taught.
“Endurance is to be than pacing up and down within the cell of our circumstance; it is not only acceptance of the things allotted to us, but to , ’act for ourselves’ by magnifying what is allotted to us (Alma 29:3, 6).… True enduring represents not merely the passage of time, but the passage of the soul.”
(CR, April 1990, p. 43)