Friends in Christ Weekly Message
August 17, 2013

     Do you see what this means - all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we'd better get on with it. Strip down, start running - and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed - that exhilarating finish in and with God - he could put up with anything along the way: cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!
Hebrews 12:1-3 (Message*)

We have what more traditional translations call “a great cloud of witnesses” from whose examples we can benefit. In fact, most of them went astray from time to time, some in very dramatic ways. We should be able to learn positively from what they accomplished for God, and negatively from the ways they stumbled.

The key thing is to keep our eyes on Jesus. He is our supreme example. We can never immerse ourselves too deeply in how he lived and in his Spirit which is always available to us today. We need to let his Spirit live in us, and cast aside our weaknesses and distractions. We can not be who each of us should be by our own efforts. We need to let Jesus take root in our being.

Bill Samuel

* The Message version ©2002 by Eugene H. Peterson.

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