Ignatius 100ish AD to Polycarp shortly before being fed to the beasts in the Coliseum for Jesus (King of the ages).

THE TIME SEEKS FOR YOU, like shipmasters seek for wind and like storm-tossed sailors seek for harbor, TO REACH TO GOD. Be self-controlled, like God’s athlete. The prize is immortality and eternal life, about which you also have been persuaded. I am your ransom in every respect and also my chains, which you loved.

Those who appear to be trustworthy yet teach strange doctrines, do not let them amaze you. Stand firm, like an anvil being struck with a hammer. It is the mark of a great athlete to endure punishment and to achieve victory. But especially for God’s sake we must endure all things, so that he may also endure us.  Be more diligent than you are. Mark the seasons. Wait for the one above the season: the timeless one, the invisible one, who because of us is visible, the intangible one, the unsuffering one, who because of us suffers, who because of us endured in every way.

Brannan, Rick, trans. 2012. The Apostolic Fathers in English. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

“Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life; that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. And if a man also strive for masteries, yet is he not crowned, except he strive lawfully. The husbandman that laboureth must be first partaker of the fruits.” – 2 Timothy 2:3-6