Tag: Christian living

Digging in Deeper: Hebrews 11:1-2

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“Now faith is the reality of what is hoped for, the proof of what is not seen. For by this our ancestors were approved.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of my favorite songs from the 80s is George Michael’s song, Faith. I liked it pretty much entirely for the music. I never could understand the lyrics beyond the chorus. I looked them up before writing this and it’s probably good I never understood them. They’re incredibly shallow and make a mockery of real, Biblical faith, but at least the music was good (good enough for the song to make him a lot of money over the years). As we get into the next chapter of our journey through Hebrews this morning, we find ourselves in the famous Hall of Faith. This is one of the greatest reflections on faith anywhere in the Scriptures. It starts out here by defining terms for us. Let’s talk this morning about what faith is. Then, over the next few weeks, Lord willing, we’ll get a bunch of examples of what it looks like. Dive in with me.

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Morning Musing: Hebrews 10:35-39

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“So don’t throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you need endurance, so that after you have done God’s will, you may receive what was promised. For yet in a ‘very little while, the Coming One will come and not delay.’ ‘But my righteous one will live by faith; and if he draws back, I have no pleasure in him.’ But we are not those who draw back and are destroyed, but those who have faith and are saved.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever missed your chance? If you have, think about that moment for a bit. What was the opportunity, and why did you miss it? Were you late for it? Did someone else snatch it from you? Or was the loss a matter of patience? There are not a few opportunities lost to a lack of patience. We want things on our timetable, but that’s not always or even often the timetable on which they operate. If we demand ours anyway, we’re setting ourselves up to miss out on a lot. As chapter 10 comes to a close, the author calls us to stick with following Jesus, even when it gets long and hard, so we don’t miss out on the best part. Let’s talk about it.

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Morning Musing: Hebrews 10:32-34

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“Remember the earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to taunts and afflictions, and at other times you were companions of those who were treated that way. For you sympathized with the prisoners and accepted with joy the confiscation of your possessions, because you know that you yourselves have a better and enduring possession.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the things Jesus made clear over the course of His ministry is that following Him was not going to be easy. In fact, it was going to be hard…really hard. When we give our lives to God’s kingdom, the authorities of the kingdom of this world aren’t going to take the loss of their power over us lightly. To the extent they are able, they are going to make our lives as difficult and miserable as they can. The obvious question here is why anyone would sign up for this. Because there’s more to life than this life. Let’s talk about it.

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Digging in Deeper: Hebrew 10:26-31

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“For if we deliberately go on sinning after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire about to consume the adversaries. Anyone who disregarded the law of Moses died without mercy, based on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment do you think one will deserve who has trampled on the Son of God, who has regarded as profane the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know the one who has said, ‘Vengeance belongs to me; I will repay,’ and again, ‘The Lord will judge his people.’ It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever had one of those moments when you knew you had lost, and you were just waiting for the defeat to be completed? I’ve had lots of those moments while playing video games over the years. Honestly, most of the time I responded by simply turning the game off. If I’m watching one of my sports teams lose – especially in a big game – I’ll turn off the TV. Why bother sticking around when you know the results aren’t going to be what you had hoped? In life, though, that’s not an option. And with Jesus, grace and redemption are always possible. What the author of Hebrews is talking about here, however, is a situation when a terrible loss becomes unavoidable. Let’s wrestle today with what may be the most disturbing warning of the letter. Hang on tight for this one, and don’t look away until we reach the end. You’ll not want to miss this.

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Habits of Faithfulness

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With one more week to go in our series (and with this being the final part that I’m preaching), this week we are talking about another critically important way we can stand in our faithfulness to Christ even when we are standing alone. As we look at the story of Daniel in the lions’ den, we are going to talk about the kinds of things we do without having to think about them and what that means for our lives. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Habits of Faithfulness

I want you to think for just a minute about the sheer number of things you do on a daily basis that you feel like you could do with your eyes either metaphorically or literally closed. Given how automated many of the things you do are, that may actually be a tough list to compile. How many things in your life do you do because they are simply what you do? Surely your list includes some pretty basic things. If you use any kind of corrective lens, I suspect putting those on in the morning is automatic. Hopefully most of your personal hygiene routine runs on autopilot. The people sitting next to you are grateful for that. If you are a coffee drinker, your morning date with your coffee machine probably doesn’t require a lot of thought…which is probably good because if you are a coffee-drinker, you may not give a whole lot of thought to much of anything before that first cup starts energizing your system. 

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