Running the Race of Faith: Fix Your Eyes on Jesus

And somewhere along the way, we begin asking the same question that the original readers of the book of Hebrews were asking. It's a question that sits right at the heart of Hebrews. How do we keep on hiking? Right? How do we keep on following Jesus when we are bone tired? How do we keep on following Jesus when the journey is so hard? And it's not a theoretical question. It's a human question. And if we can't take our real human questions to the scriptures, then the scriptures are of no value. [00:28:57] (38 seconds)  #KeepGoingWithJesus

If you wanna see the model of a faithful human life, look at the life that Jesus lived. In Jesus, we discovered that our faith is not primarily about escaping the world. It's about participating in God's healing of the world. It's not abandoning creation. It's loving creation. It's not fearing our neighbors. It's loving our neighbors. It's not drawing smaller and smaller circles, but drawing larger ones. The goal is not simply getting to heaven someday. The goal is learning to live the way of Jesus here and now as heaven comes on earth. [00:49:16] (34 seconds)  #LiveLikeJesusNow

That's a recounting not of perfect people, but of decidedly imperfect ones who nevertheless lived by faith. Abraham got things tragically wrong. Sarah laughed in god's face. Moses doubted God to the point of paralysis and couldn't move and couldn't decide. David failed catastrophically. The prophets, each one of them, suffered profound loss and failure and rejection. None of them were flawless. None of them were perfect. And that's the point. [00:34:29] (46 seconds)  #ImperfectButFaithful

Some of us are jostled, not because God is giving us too much to carry, but because we keep picking up things along the way that we're never powers to carry in the first place. more and more convinced that one of the spiritual disciplines of maturity is learning the difference. And there's a prayer that I find myself returning to over and over again. God, help me to let go. Help me to relinquish. Help me to release what was never mine to hold. [00:39:15] (29 seconds)  #LetGoWhatIsntYours

And some of us can hear that today. It's not a five year plan. It's not a ten year vision. It's not certainty about every question and an answer for every doubt and the response to every mystery. It's just the next faithful step. Because the Christian life has never been about having a perfect faith. It's always been about trusting the one who remains perfectly faithful. The one who's walked this path before us, the one who scrambled ahead of us, the one who walks beside us, the one who walks behind us, the one who watches over us, the one who holds us from underneath. [00:50:18] (42 seconds)  #NextFaithfulStep

The writer to the Hebrews would agree, faith is not a sprint. It's not intended to be some quick emotional release. It's not one dramatic moment after the next. Faith is a long obedience in the same direction. And this insight feels particularly important today. We live in a a culture obsessed with immediacy. We want fast food, fast internet, next day delivery. But if a web page takes more than three seconds to to load, we we start preparing our formal complaint. [00:42:40] (38 seconds)  #FaithIsLongGame

But the writer to the Hebrews is not writing about sort of passive spectators sitting up in the bleachers evaluating our performance. Right? This is not spiritual reality television. Nobody is holding up scorecards. Nobody is judging. The witnesses are those who bear witness. They're not to watch us and evaluate us, but they're to to bear witness and to testify that faithfulness is possible. [00:33:38] (35 seconds)  #WitnessesTestify

But spiritual growth happens at the speed of relationship. It happens slowly, patiently, over time, and with intentionality. Following Jesus isn't about arriving there quickly. Following Jesus is about remaining faithful. Faithfulness often looks less dramatic than we imagine. Sometimes faithfulness is just showing up. Sometimes the most spiritual act of faithfulness that we can perform is getting up out of bed in the morning and coming to church. It's getting into our car and making that visit at the hospital. [00:43:18] (42 seconds)  #ShowUpFaithfully