Better by Design

Transcript of segment on Endurance;

What he wants to do is, he want you and [me] to maintain and strengthen our loyalty, especially when we are tempted to fall away in face of shameful trials. He wants us to remember that Jesus is the bearer of a greater hope, that he is the High Priest of a better covenant. And he wants that knowledge to be an incentive to you to keep going, keep keeping on. Maybe you’ve stumbled and fallen, maybe you keep falling and getting up again, maybe you have wandered away from your Christian faith, Well, this book of Hebrews wants to reach out to you and to say, ‘Come back into the race – and run!’ In fact, this is the language that is used in chapter 12. There’s an athletic metaphor. The Christian life is like a race. We’ll being watched by a great cloud of witnesses who have run before us and who gather to cheer us on. Ahead of us is Jesus, the pacesetter, the first finisher of the course. And we’re encouraged to ‘run with endurance the race that is set before us.’ We’re to understand that trials in our lives are for our disciplined training in the gymnasium. He uses that word in chapter 12. Sufferings, whether they are inward trials or external circumstances, are a necessary part of the cleaning up, the straightening out, the getting ready for heaven, for the child of God. But above all this, he tells us in this chapter, ‘Here we have no continuing city.’