STAY STRONG AND DILIGENT

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Pioneer and Perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

Hebrews 6:11-12, 12:1-3

This ends this reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Live life long enough and you realize one thing.

It’s a marathon and not a sprint...a seemingly endless connection of days that turn into weeks that turn into months and then years. We get up, we go through 24 hours, we lay back down again, and then start over...day after day after day.

With this, there’s a real need for endurance and strength and diligence to persevere and make it to the finish line, that day when we draw our last breath and our heart beats for the final time, at least in this earthly existence.

Now, this long, epic journey we’re on isn’t some haphazard series of events taking us from one waypoint to another. Rather, our paths are marked out for us by the God who made us, the One who holds the master plan for every single life He creates. Given this, we always have to remember that we never journey on any one day alone but know that God is with us to help us take every single step. All we need to do is to allow Him to.

And there is the rub in all this, right?

For even though God is ever present and right there with us, we too often choose to abandon Him and go our own way, much like a young child decides to not hold the hand of their parent because they want to do as they wish. Usually, this decision to break away and chase after our own desires is grounded in sin for the desires of the flesh will always lead us there, far away from the desires of the Spirit (Galatians 5:17). And we always will end up in trouble of one form or another, with God at a minimum but this is usually in tandem with the mess we make of our life along the way as well.

This issue of going off course while running this marathon of life isn’t just a modern day phenomenon. For as we see in our verses for today from Hebrews, the Jewish Christians of the first century were also facing the same challenges. Look again at these words here:

We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Pioneer and Perfecter of faith. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Hebrews 6:11-12, 12:1-3

Note here that the call is for “diligence” and “perseverance” to be exercised while running “the race marked out for us” until “the very end”, throwing off “everything that hinders” like laziness and “sin that so easily entangles”. We’re to “imitate those who through faith and patience” finished the race and inherited what had “been promised” with Jesus as the prime example, the One we are to fix “our eyes on”.

Indeed, the “Pioneer and Perfecter of faith” ran the most perfect race of obedience ever, enduring “the cross” and “scorning its shame” before being resurrected by God in power to He could sit “at the right hand” of His Father’s throne, victorious and triumphant over all creation. Because of all He did, we get to live our lives in sure hope through His redeeming work for just as He overcame and “endured” the “opposition from sinners”, so too can we, not through our strength but through His within us, a strength through which we can do all things (Philippians 4:13).

Friends, we are “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses today”, Christians who have ran the same race we’re running today and successfully finished because they kept their eyes fixed on Jesus. As we leg out our own respective marathons, let us do so with the blessed assurance that our victory is guaranteed in Christ and because of Him, a place in the eternal Kingdom of glory awaits.

For after we cross the finish line, we will see that the best life is still yet to come and we’ll live it forever.

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark

PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it. Send any prayer requests to TheChristianWalkPrayers@gmail.com.