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A couple of our City Groups are having potluck dinners this week and one is not meeting due to July 4th celebrations. It would still be good to think back through this week’s passage on your own or with a couple of others. Below you will find a guide for personal prayer and reflection.
Read Hebrews 6:13-20
- Here is the very true promise of God: Ephesians 1:11-14 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.
- Here is the very grave concern:…that we will not persevere in faith to obtain the promises of God. This is why the writer continually exhorts – Hebrews 3:14 For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. A true faith is not a perfect faith, for even Abraham tried to work God’s promise in his own way. Rather, a true faith is a patient and persevering faith… to the end.
- Are you going to make it?
1. Some of you may feel like you are securely tethered to yourself. You’re confident that you’ve got things figured out with your own expertise, abilities, resources and connections.
- Your crisis of faith is that you do not truly need faith in God.
- You may profess public allegiance to Jesus, but you do not have the joy of counting everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus as your Lord
2. Others of you may feel like you are hanging on by a thread to life. You’re not sure if you’re going to make it or how you’re going to make it.
- Your crisis of faith is that you’re doubting God is God. (Is God really good? just? present?)
- You may profess faith in Jesus, but the worries of the world have left you joyless and unable to fix your eyes on Jesus the founder and perfecter of your faith.
3. Rather than being tethered to yourself and thread-bare to this world, this passage speaks to being anchored to Jesus.
- Remember again the story of Abraham. Remember again his patient faith. See again God’s faithfulness to Abraham and know that God is faithful to us.
- Be imitators of this father of faith by trusting God’s promises and persevering to the end.
- We can have confidence in God’s promises because God has made an oath, swearing by Himself.