30.09 | Endurance
Hebrews 10:19-39
‘But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.’
Hebrews 10:39
They were smashing our couch to pieces on the street.
We’d moved into our first home as newlyweds — a small terraced house in Bristol. And when we arrived, the removal team had taken in our few bits of furniture.
Apart from the couch. No matter how many ways they tried to wedge it through the front door, it wouldn’t go. After watching them struggle and sweat with it for over half an hour, we realised there was no possible angle, door-removal, or amount of brute force that would get it in. We offered it to some of our new neighbours, who gladly took it.
However, about a week later, we saw them with the couch out on the street, breaking it to pieces — apparently more valuable to them as firewood than as something to sit on.
When we get something for free, we tend not to value it so much. It might seem like a happy novelty for a few days, but, after a little while, the freebie tends to get cast aside, overlooked, remain unused or unread, or just get smashed up for firewood.
And as we find ourselves today, working the zeal of the author of Hebrews 10 into our hearts, we are confronted by this tendency to cheapen what is freely received.
Analyse the movements of the heart.
The readers began with zeal. They began enduring suffering, hardship, reproach and affliction. They began in radical compassion to the imprisoned and stunning immaterialism — their minds set upon eternal reward.
And yet, as time has passed, something has happened.
They have wavered in their confession.
They have receded in their works.
They have neglected to meet together.
They have shrunk back.
Christianity is the rebirth into a new reality. It is a reality in which we are offered daily growth, continual renewal — a further-up-and-further-in to the things of the heavenly and the heart of the Father. It is the path to the larger life.
And yet, it is also so possible to not grow, but shrink.
To shrink back in our words.
To shrink back in our works.
To shrink back from our community.
I’ve seen it happen so many times. I’ve done it myself. The compromises begin small. Little admissions of ideas that have their roots in the secular rather than the sacred. Little withdrawals from the acts of risk and purpose into a preference for hiding and self-preservation. Little compromises that become habitual avoidance of Christian community.
Because truth fades in the soul in the soul when it is unspoken. Gifts unused will atrophy. And community untended inevitably becomes superficial.
We give many reasons for this. We commend clever new ideas. We justify our lack of purposeful activity under the banner of self-care. We argue that community is nonessential for an individualistic spirituality. And yet, the outcome is shrinking in the things of the Kingdom. It is the smaller world of the worldly. And ultimately it is the cheapening of the weighty glories that are ours in Jesus, turning what we once found precious to scrap materials on the street.
Friends, the Christian road is born not of novelty, but of endurance. It is not well run by shaking off the simple foundations in favour of faddish complexity, but rather pressing ever deeper into them. The greater life comes most simply through persistent endurance in the substantial matters of the Kingdom of Jesus. Words. Acts. Community. On repeat. Deeper and further for every single year of our earthly pilgrimage. For maturity always have, always will, and only ever comes to those who endure.
Reflect:
Words. Acts. Community.
What temptation do I face to shrink back in this season? What does endurance look like?
Pray:
Father,
It is so easy to cheapen
That which you have given;
To have received the beauty of grace,
And then rescinded the value,
In a thousand little decisions.
Father,
For where I have done this—
Abdicating my confidence
And abandoning holy fear—
I come back today.
Humbly, honestly, hungry for your transforming strength.
That I may live with endurance
All my days—
Unto the expansive ways of faith
And a trajectory into glory.
In Jesus’ Name,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
2 Chronicles 4:1-6:11 | Psalm 115