Hebrews 13.7
Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.
People have just enough religion to make themselves miserable; they cannot be happy at a wild party and they are uncomfortable at a prayer meeting. — Dwight Moody
The subject of faith is discussed at a higher frequency in Hebrews, three dozen times in just 13 chapters, than any other book of the Bible. The author roots faith not in human experience, but in its object. “The nature of faith and the vitality of faith is rooted in what God is like, not what we are like,” observes John Piper. “You don’t find out what Christian faith is by consulting your felt needs. You find out by consulting the nature of God.”
The quintessential explanation of Christian faith is found in Hebrews 11, which opens with “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” The sixth verse of the chapter is nearly identical to the first, bookending a single idea: faith is believing in God’s being and beauty.
A man with any sense will not follow after that which he conceives has no advantage in it; but when a man can honestly say, “The best interests of my highest nature depend upon my getting to God, becoming his servant, and having him as my Father and my Friend,” then it is that he diligently seeks him. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The faithful in Scripture are contrasted not only with the irreligious, but also against the self-righteous and those who did nothing to cultivate their inherited faith. Charles Haddon Spurgeon examines the difference in his sermon “What is Essential in Coming to God?”
Of all the miserable things in the world, a little religion is about the worst of all. The joys of the world—and it has its delusions which worldlings call joys—they dare not go after; and for want of faith they dare not claim the joys of the Spirit of God; so they are wretched.
That man gets the most out of godliness who gives himself most to it. He not only seeks him, but seeks him with all his heart, and mind, and soul, and strength.
Hebrews provides Christians with examples of faith to imitate, not to be confused with recipes of actions to mimic. Each person’s life presents the glory of faith in full bloom — the first fruits of salvation worth seeking after.
Today’s Reading
1 Chronicles 11-12 (Listen – 11:59)
Hebrews 13 (Listen – 3:31)
