How to Get Motivation to Persist in Trusting God through Hard Times — Hebrews 10-12 (pt. 15)

  • From Abraham and Moses to the ‘Stanford Marshmallow Experiment’, the challenge of persisting is a common human experience.
  • The Bible gives us three ways that not only help us endure, but turn it from a negative to a positive experience.

 

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Last week:

  • The difference between living with your focus on
    • the visible world
    • vs. the invisible world of God’s promises
  • and how this will change your life

Israel’s Heros of Faith

  • Why were these people chosen and not others?
  • Not stories of the great/pure/perfect leaders
  • People who were marginalized by their culture because of their beliefs
    • e.g. Sarah, Noah, Moses (early years), Rahab…
  • Often very imperfect in their faith
  • But nevertheless God values them so highly because they treated his invisible promises as visible reality

Stories of Trusting God for what is not yet Visible

  • If you have a firm hold of the true reality (by means of faith) -it will do three things for you:
  1. It will change what you value in this life
  2. You will have a different attitude to your problems
  3. You will have joy and hope for the future

Structure of Hebrews

4:14–16 Draw near to God with Confidence!
5–10:18   The New Covenant and the incredible love and access to the very presence of God
10:19–25 Draw near to God with Confidence!
10:32–39 Motivation for Persisting in Trusting God
11        Stories of Trusting God in the Old Testament
12:1–11   Motivation for Persisting in Trusting God

Three reasons/motivations for Endurance:

  1. Future Joy (12:1–3)
  2. Faith developed & rewarded (11:1–12:1)
  3. Specific Training (12:5–11)
  • What does the word “Endure” mean?
    • Not give up
    • Keep going even though it is hard
      (staying all day enjoying the beach is not endurance)
    • suffer something unpleasant for the sake of a worthwhile result

Hebrews 10:32–39

  1. Remember the the former days, when after you were enlightened, you endured a great contest of suffering.
  2. Sometimes you were exposed publicly to abuse and afflictions,
and at other times you were in fellowship with those who were being treated in this way.
  1. For you sympathized with the prisoners
and accepted with joy the confiscation of your possessions,
because you knew that you yourselves have a better possession—and an enduring one.
 
  1. Therefore do not throw away your confidence,
      which has a great reward.
  2. Therefore you need endurance, so that, having done God’s will,
      you will receive what has been promised.
 
  1. For “in just a little while, the Coming One will come and not delay.
  1. But my righteous one will live by faith;
yet if he shrinks back, my soul will not be pleased with him.”
  1. But we are not those who shrink back and thus perish,
but those who have faith and are preserved.

AMF

Habakkuk 1:2–3 CSB

  1. How long, Lord, must I call for help
    • and you do not listen
    or cry out to you about violence
    • and you do not save?
  2. Why do you force me to look at injustice?
    • Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?

Habakkuk 2:1–3

  1. I will take my stand at my watchpost
    • and station myself on the lookout tower.
    I will watch to see what he will say to me
    • and what I should reply about my complaint.
  2. The Lord answered me:
    Write down this vision;
    • clearly inscribe it on tablets
    so one may easily read it.
  3. For the vision is yet for its appointed time;
    • it testifies about the end—it will not lie.
    Though seems slow, wait for it,
    • it will certainly come and not be late.

1. Future Joy (12:1–3)

Hebrews 12:1–3

  1. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
    let us put aside every weight, and sin which entangles,
    and run with endurance the race that is set before us,
  1. keeping our eyes on the founder and perfecter of faith, Jesus.
Because of the sake of the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising its shame,
and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
  1. Consider, then, him
who endured such opposition from sinners,
in order that you might not become weary or lose heart.

AMF

  • You are the joy that motivated Jesus! —He was thinking of you!

Joy

Joy

Image source: “Pixabay”

Stanford Marshmallow Experiment (1970)

  • Used children age four to six as subjects
  • The children could eat the marshmallow, but if they waited for fifteen minutes without giving in to the temptation, they would be rewarded with a second marshmallow.

Marshmallow 1

Marshmallow 1

Marshmallow 2

Marshmallow 2

Marshmallow 3

Marshmallow 3

Marshmallow 4

Marshmallow 4
  • Only 1/3 managed to wait.
  • One of the boys who succeeded was asked how he did it:
    • I promised myself I would put both marshmallows in at once, and that kept me going!

Reward: Two at once

Reward: Two at once
  • 10 years later they followed up the children: those who had waited were doing significantly better.
  • Have you ever had a situation where the joy of the future keeps you going through unpleasantness in the present?
    • An example (of which I have no personal experience!) is childbirth

Minecraft Work

Minecraft Work
  • A while ago Anne decided she would make a blanket for one of our grandchildren who was into Minecraft
    • It was a huge amount of work, taking her a few months
    • What kept her motivated was the joy he would have when he got it (and he did!)

Minecraft Joy

Minecraft Joy
  • Studying for an exam
  • Working hard for a promotion
  • Saving up for something special
  • What is it that keeps you going?
  • So the first Motivation we have to Endure is “Anticipated Joy”:

Reasons/Motivations to Endure

  1. Anticipated Joy (Jesus)
  2. Growing in Faith/Trust in God

2. Faith developed & rewarded (11:1–12:1)

2. Faith developed & rewarded

  • Trust in God is like a muscle that needs developing
  • A step of trust
  • Abraham developed his “faith muscle”
  • Grow the faith muscle (show the kettlebell)
    • Grows as it is exercised
  • This can “re-frame” your problem as a way of totally changing your attitude to it.
  • When we came to Canada in 1991 I was due to graduate in 1993…

Abraham’s growth in faith

  • Stage 1 —leaving his homeland:
  1. By faith, when he was called, Abraham obeyed, leaving for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he left, not knowing where he was going.
  • Stage 2 —not putting down roots:
  1. By faith he wandered in the land of promise, as if a foreign land, living in tents as did Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise.
  2. awaiting therefore the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God
  • Stage 3 —with Sarah waiting 25 years for a child:
  1. By faith Sarah herself, even when she was past the age, also received power to conceive, because she considered the one who had promised to be faithful.
  2. Therefore from one man, and indeed from one as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars in the sky and as innumerable as the sand on the seashore.
  • Stage 4 —Being asked to sacrifice his son:
  1. By faith Abraham offered up Isaac, being tested
    his only son, the one who had received the promises.
  2. It was said to Abraham: “Through Isaac your descendants will be traced”.
  3. He considered that God was able even to raise Isaac from the dead and so, in a prefigurement of what was to come, received him
  • In one way this was even harder, since it was active and not passive
    • There are different kinds of tests that you might be in right now
  • Sometimes you just hang in there, doing what you know is right (e.g. in a work situation)
  • Employment situation, my stories…
  • Joseph – brothers turned on him / false accusations / betrayal —all the muscles were developed

Three reasons/motivations for Endurance:

  1. Future Joy (12:1–3)
  2. Faith developed & rewarded (11:1–12:1)
  3. Specific Training (12:5–11)

3. Specific Training (12:5–11)

  • show the workbook
    • Lots of exercises that have to be done
    • God has a “training workbook” for you!

Hebrews 12:1–11

  1. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,
    let us put aside every weight, and sin which entangles,
    and run with endurance the race that is set before us,
  1. keeping our eyes on the founder and perfecter of faith, Jesus.
Because of the sake of the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising its shame,
and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
  1. Consider, then, him
who endured such opposition from sinners,
in order that you might not become weary or lose heart.
  1. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood in your struggle against sin
  1. And have you forgotten the exhortation addressed to you as sons and daughters?
“My son, do not scorn the Lord’s training
or give up when he corrects you.
  1. For the Lord trains the one he loves
and chastises every son and daughter he accepts.”
  1. Endure your suffering as training; God is treating you as sons and daughters.
    For what son or daughter is there that a father does not train?
  2. But if you do not experience training, something all children have shared in,
          then you are illegitimate and are not children.
  3. Besides, we have experienced training from our earthly fathers and we respected them;
    shall we not submit ourselves all the more to the Father of spirits and receive life?
  4. For they trained us for a little while as seemed good to them,
    but he does so for our benefit, that we may share his holiness.
  5. Now all training seems painful at the time, not joyful.
    But later it produces the fruit of peace and righteousness for those given exercise by it.

AMF

  • Moses
    • Born in Egypt, destined to lead the nation of Israel out of slavery to the promised land
    • At age 40 he thought he was ready to lead so what did he do?
      • He started a “mini-uprising”
      • But nobody followed him! It was an uprising of 1. He had to run for his life!
    • For the next 40 years he lived as a shepherd in the wilderness
    • It must have seemed like a waste of his life, but why was it not? How was he being trained?
      • learned to live in the wilderness
      • learned to look after sheep
      • developed a relationship with God.
        • Now he could lead them God’s way, not his own
    • For the next 40 years he could speak with God face to face and lead Israel—it was worth it
  • Stpry of student who came to Bible College from the US

Joy

Joy

Image source: “Pixabay”

Three Reasons/Motivations to Endure

  1. Joy (picture)
  2. Grow the faith muscle (kettlebell)
  3. Training (the workbook)
  • Those are the three images to remember.

Application

  • Is God training you now?
  • Are there any negative experiences now, that you can re-frame as training?
  • Does anyone have any experiences to share?

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