Lesson 27 – Endurance for the race
Read Hebrews 12 - www.bible.com/bible/59/heb.12.esv

For the past 11 chapters of Hebrews we have studied God’s message to us through His language called “Son.” We’ve seen how God desires faith in Him to be the main course of our study while we are here on earth.

Now as we reach the final 2 chapters of this book, we will study how that faith works through us to change our lives and touches the lives of those around us. We are surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses” and therefore need to run our race well. Who are these witnesses? Those who have learned faith before us, those who did not receive the promises, and even the angels of God (1 Timothy 5:21, 1 Peter 1:12). Think of the witnesses in the stands at an Olympic competition, who cheer on their favorite athlete – and the sound of the cheering urges that athlete to feats of skill they’ve never achieved before. So our witnesses are cheering us on even now, to accomplish things by faith in Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, that we can never imagine being able to do.


Our faith must look honestly on the face of Jesus as He bore the beatings, carried His cross, fell beneath its weight, and finally was nailed to it to give His life for us. We must see what it cost Him so we could become His. When we are tempted to complain that our burden is too heavy, we must see His. And in our gazing, we come to realize that the times He challenges us to greater faith, or disciplines us for sin we have not confessed – all these are for the single purpose of making us to be like Him so we will also be able to live with Him for eternity.

Weariness in our faith-journey is not a thing to be allowed in our lives. Jesus’ solution to weariness is never to “get away from it all” or to take a vacation from Him – He says if we are weary we must come closer to Him to find our rest (Matthew 11:28). For as we rest in Him, we find, if we listen very closely, that He sings His own lullaby of love over us (Zephaniah 3:17).

 Our faith must know of a certainty that God loves us, that He desires only what is best for us (Romans 8:28). As we learn to trust His love in our lives, that faith will grow. He takes us through valleys that may seem to be death itself, but our faith will find that death is not real, it is only a shadow (Psalm 23). As our faith grows, we will discover there is nothing in all that is created that can ever separate us from His love (Romans 8:38-39). All He does in our lives is done for one reason only – He loves us!