Luke 12:49-56, Hebrews 11:29-12:3

I got a shock the other day. I looked up the website of my favourite photographer. Dave not only takes great photos but he gives a Christian comment on them. I’ve shown some of them here. He hadn’t posted anything since Mary anointed Jesus’ feet back in mid March and I’d been wondering why the silence. I had even given up looking. But I looked again, just in case, and I found out that Dave is seriously depressed. A number of circumstances compounded upon him and he was driven to the depths. He has been clawing his way back and some light is reaching into his darkness so that three weeks ago he was able to write an explanation on his website. He has a long way to go but he has good support and is confident he’ll make it.

 

I hate it when this sort of thing happens. I wish it wouldn’t but it does. And it keeps on happening.

 

If it isn’t one thing it is another. One is depressed, another has an accident, while another is robbed, and another is rejected. Others are treated badly for being Christians and we all experience the loss of those we love for death comes to everyone at some time. And it’s one thing to cope with circumstances – things that just happen – the sort of thing that happens to everyone – but it’s another thing again to cope with abuse that comes our way just because we follow Jesus. But cope we must.

 

 

I don’t need to remind you that life is rough, tough and hazardous. We know that from our own experience; we know it from other people’s experience and we know it from Jesus, both his experience and his teaching. That’s not a pretty picture he paints in that passage from Luke. Nor is the picture in Hebrews entirely a pretty one. While all these heroes came out on top by faith, many of them had a rather gruesome route to glory.

 

 

So what do I say to you? What would I say to Dave? Or to anyone for that matter?
I would say, “Do what it says in Hebrews: live by faith, looking to Jesus.”
But what are we to do to live by faith?

 

 

Hebrews gives us three things to do: free ourselves from anything and everything that holds us back from following Jesus, run with perseverance and look to Jesus.

 

 

Free ourselves from anything and everything that holds us back from following Jesus. That’s really what I was talking about last week. Line your values up with God’s values. If FredDagg were to line up for a hurdles race how would you rate his chances? The hat will just blow off. Black singlet – cracker mate. Shorts – pretty good too. He needs to get rid of the gumboots, definitely, they’ll knock down more hurdles than they’ll clear.

 

 

Run with perseverance.
One of the reasons they have chaplains in tertiary institutions is to help with retention. Chaplains help students deal with the stuff in their lives so that it doesn’t stop them finishing their courses. One of the biggest problems for those who run courses of any sort is those who start and don’t finish. In all of life there are many who start but don’t finish. God is very keen that once we’ve begun to follow Jesus we don’t drop out.

 

 

People have studied this and found that the thing that gets a person to the finish of anything is something called grit. In her excellent TED Talk on this research, Angela Duckworth describes Grit as, “…perseverance and passion for long term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future, day in and day out. Not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years.” Everyone mentioned in Hebrews 11 had grit. Everyone who would emulate their lives needs it too.

 

Look to Jesus.
When your’e running or walking where are you looking? When I’m running or walking I spend a lot of my time looking down. I don’t trip over things and I don’t stand in dog-doings, but I don’t see as much of the scenery or what’s going on around me as I might. And it takes a lot more grit to complete the journey looking down than it does looking up. It’s hard living God’s way, but not nearly as hard if we’ve got our eyes on Jesus.

 

Jesus really has been there; done that. Whatever we face he’s faced – and tougher. He knows what it’s like for us and so he is very supportive of us. As Hebrews says in chapter 4(vv14-16).

 

Let us, then, hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we have a great High Priest who has gone into the very presence of God—Jesus, the Son of God. Our High Priest is not one who cannot feel sympathy for our weaknesses. On the contrary, we have a High Priest who was tempted in every way that we are, but did not sin. Let us have confidence, then, and approach God’s throne, where there is grace. There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us just when we need it.

 

 

Fix our eyes on Jesus. He’s run the race, even though it was more costly than we can imagine – and he has made it possible for us to ‘win’ the race too, because of his death and resurrection (v 2). Keep our eyes on him.

 

 

The other day I read Dean Nelson’s account of trail biking in British Colombia. “Our leader, Doug, gave us some advice as we were putting on our elbow, knee and head armor. This bit I should have heeded more closely: When you have to avoid something, or go through something, or have to turn quickly, or have a narrow path between the mountain on one side, and the cliff on the other, don’t look at where you are – look at where you want to go,” he said. “If you focus on the things that can make you crash, then you will crash. I’ll be on up ahead of you. Keep your eyes on me.”

 

The first half-hour or so was great. Trails weren’t too rough. We had to squeeze the bikes between a couple of boulders that had come down and blocked most of the path. Some of the climbs were steep, even causing an occasional wheelie, but do-able. And then I hit some loose dirt and the back wheel went out from under me. I must have hit the front brake instead of the rear, and the bike spun in a hard circle, launching me several feet into the rocks. My friend Dee came up the trail behind me. He retrieved my shoes and helped me get back on the bike. It wasn’t as if you could just leave it there and quit.

 

 

“I crashed three more times that day, all of them painful, and here’s what I learned: Doug was right. If I focused on where I was, on how dangerous my situation was in that moment, on all of the things that could go wrong, on that fact that a similar condition caused me trouble before, I wiped out. I lost my nerve. I had no confidence. I was afraid.

 

 

“When I kept my eyes on Doug, even just a glimpse of his back, I stayed on course.
And although it may sound counter-intuitive, I noticed that when I focused on where I wanted to be, rather than on where I was, it made where I was in that moment even better.
Keeping an eye ahead of me increased my pleasure of the present.

 

 

“The swelling is down and my confidence is returning. I’m not ready to get back on the trail yet, but when I am, I’ll at least know where to look.” Donald Millar’s blog, 16 Aug, 2013

 

 

Here’s one more good thing: we’re not alone. There are many others who have lived faithfully for God in the past. Then, there are all the Christians we know. Imagine them all standing around you, as if you’re in a race, cheering you on to the finishing line, where Jesus stands ready to welcome you.

 

 

It wasn’t easy for Jesus to follow God’s way and he made it clear that following him wouldn’t be easy for us either.

 

 

Therefore I encourage all of us to support one another in the difficulties we face and always to stay focused on Jesus, trusting in him.

 

 

Oh, and look to Jesus when things are good, too.