One hundred years ago children studying from McGuffy's Readers recited this verse. To persevere means to persist, to endure, to continue, to hold on, to be a plodder, to stick with it and see it through to completion. Stable people of good character demonstrate perseverance.
Unstable people quit, drop out, run off, vanish, give up.
Someone has said that people do not fail, they simply quit before they succeed. Unbelieving people demon-strate extraordinary perseverance in pursuing temporal and materialistic goals. Not one of us has spent that much or made that sacrifice or persisted so long in seeking one soul which is more than the cargo of that sunken Spanish galleon. People of character continue in what God has given them to do.