Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - What Story Are You a Part Of? | My Favorite Verses | Hebrews 12.1-3

Episode Date: May 4, 2021

Are you struggling to find meaning in your life? Are you in the middle of a difficult season? Get some encouragement from https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/staff/keith-simon/ (Pastor Keith Simon) as he continues our series My Favorite Verses with https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+12.1-3&version=ESV (Hebrews 12.1-3). Interested in more content like this? Check out https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/podcasts/how-to-deal-with-the-storms-of-life/ (How to Deal With the Storms of Life). Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our https://www.thecrossingchurch.com/ (website) and follow us on https://www.facebook.com/TenMinuteBibleTalks (Facebook), https://www.instagram.com/thecrossingcomo/ (Instagram), and https://twitter.com/tmbtpodcast (Twitter) @TheCrossingCOMO and @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to Tim Minut Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. My name is Patrick Miller. And I'm Keith Simon. We are currently exploring some of our favorite Bible verses and how they've changed our lives. Also, if you want to connect with us, follow us on Twitter at TMBT podcast. You can also check out our hashtag, hashtag, Ask TMBT, where you can ask us anything, and we'd love to connect with you. There are over 31,000 verses in the Bible. All of them true.

All of them inspired by God. All of them useful in our Christian life. All of them helpful. But the reality is that all of us have certain verses that are favorites. And that's what we've been doing in this series, is just sharing some of our favorite verses, verses that have had a special impact in our life. And one thing you'll hear me say over and over is that I've always had a desire

to make my life count. for something bigger than myself. Long before I was a Christian, I had this desire to live for something bigger than just me. And the verses I want to share with you today that have impacted me have helped me understand the story that my life is a part of, that my life is part of a bigger story than just a story about me. But let me start with this. An author named Donald Miller tells a story about a family who had a teenage girl who had kind of drifted away from her family, her faith, her education, her friends. Everything was different now. And at least in the dad's eyes, things weren't just different, but they were worse. She was dressing differently, the people she

hung out with, he thought was a bad influence on her faith. And it just wasn't going well. And so this father, who loved his daughter, met with Donald Miller, the guy, who's telling the story and just said, hey, here's our situation. What should I do? And I think the father thought that his friend would tell him to kind of clamp down, to set some rules up, to protect his daughter. But instead, his friend, Donald Miller, said, I think you need to give your daughter a better story. And the dad was like, well, what do you mean? And he said, well, her new boyfriend, her new friends, they've all given her a story that is attractive to her. And I think you need to give her a better story that makes sense of her life.

And so the dad thought about it, prayed about it. And one night he comes to the dinner table and he starts talking about a group of orphans in Mexico that he's been reading about. And he talks about the needs and what's happening there. And they start to raise a little bit of money. And then the family takes a trip and builds some homes and gets to know some kids and comes back and recruits others to go and raises some more money. and over a little bit of time, he notices that his daughter is back to who she was

before she'd met these friends who began to influence her in a negative way. She was back in church, back excited about spending time with her family and her faith, her grades were better, everything was back to kind of, quote-unquote, normal. And it wasn't because he had placed some rules in her life. It was because he had given her a better story, a story about how our family can make a difference in kids' lives. I think all of us are in search of a better story. The story that we think we live in has a powerful impact on our life. And here's the deal. Christians have the best story. It's the best story because it's the truest story, but unfortunately, I'm afraid we might have exchanged the

best story for a lesser story. The story we live our life in helps us determine what's right and wrong. It teaches us what's valuable, what's worth sacrificing for. Listen to this quote by Colin Coward. He is a sports commentator, hosts a show on Fox, a radio show on Fox, used to be on ESPN. He said this one day. He said, I'm not overly religious. I don't know if there's a heaven. Maybe there is, and you go up and it's down comforters and mimoses and the lamb chops are

perfect and the bed's always made. But what if there isn't? And what if this is it? Here's what I know. I'm not living this earth with regrets, and I'm chasing every dream I have, every one. So do you hear the story that he lives in? He's not sure if there's a heaven or hell. He's not sure if there's any reward or judgment or any accountability for his choices. And therefore, he's not sure that anything is really right or wrong or if there's anything really worth sacrificing for. He lives in a story that tells him that life's about himself, that he should go for,

that he should pursue his dreams, no matter what they are. Compare that to Malcolm Mugridge. He was a journalist, a British intellectual. He's credited with raising Mother Teresa's profile. In other words, he saw her working in India and brought her and her work to the attention of the entire world. He was visiting India and was with a group of people. They were taking a tour, and he saw a leprosarium run by the missionary.

of charity. And he saw Mother Teresa in action. Later on, reflecting upon it, he said he had this great insight at the moment that humanists do not run leprosariums. Leprosarium, of course, is a place where they cared for lepers, a debilitating disease that ostracized people from their community. He said, people who don't believe in God, people who believe in human beings, they don't make sacrifices like that. And when you compare Mother Teresa's story that she lived in with Colin Coward's story, one is about sacrifice and loving other people at great cost of yourself, and one is about pursuing your own dreams. Their story shaped their values, what they lived for. So it's going to be hard for us to be people who are generous with our time, our talent, our treasure. It's going to be

difficult to be people who are forgiving, who serve, who love others, if we've bought into a story that life is about us, if we've exchanged the true story, the best story, the greatest story, for a lesser story. So what story do you see your life playing out in? What story are you a part of? What story are you telling yourself? What story do you believe? Is it true? Well, that brings is to Hebrews chapter 12 verses 1 through 3. Let me read it and as I do listen for the story that these verses tell you about your life. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of faith.

for the joy set before him he endured the cross scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God consider him who endured such opposition from sinners so that you will not grow weary and lose heart Hebrews 12 1 through 3 tells us to think of our life as a race now it's been a long time since I've been in a race it sounds like something kids do on a playground maybe you you're familiar with running or jogging, but maybe not racing. At least I'm not. But it is a story, a metaphor that I understand, and it helps me think about my life. Now, if we see our life as a race that God has given us in which we are to fix our eyes upon Jesus, well, what does that tell us about ourselves? First of all, it tells us that we're not spectators. We are runners in this race. People have said

about professional football games, that there are 80,000 people who need exercise, watching 22 people who need a rest. And that's a lot what Christianity feels like, that there are a lot of people who are sitting on the sidelines watching people who are serving and giving and contributing to the cause. The reality is that all of us are in the game. All of us need to be on the field or on the track or however you want to think about it. But none of us are spectators. We're all participants if our life is a race. Second, it tells us that we have a purpose, that our life has purpose, that there is a prize to win. Every race offers a prize. Jesus is the prize in God's race. That's why it tells us to fix our eyes upon him, because he is the one who makes our race worship.

it. Third, if we see the story of our life as a race that we are participating in, it tells us that we will have to put forth great effort. The Greek word for race is the same word that we get the word agony from. We get upset when life isn't comfortable. But that's because we've bought into a lesser story that says that our life should be comfortable. But the book of Hebrews tells us that we should have never expected comfort because our life is a race. And in a race, you don't expect comfort. You expect things to be agonizing. But Christians seem surprised by that.

Why? Well, because they've exchanged a better story for a lesser story. When we see our life as a race, it means that we should expect to have to train. We train for sports or dance or music or to play an instrument or to get better at our profession. But we are surprised when we have to train to grow in our faith. Training might be a small group or attending a class or reading our Bible or spending time driving in our car praying. It can mean a lot of things, but we should definitely expect to have to train if we're going

to be in God's race. And of course, we don't just train on the days we feel like it. When we see our life as a race that God has placed us in, then we expect to have to work out on days that we don't feel like it. So back to this story that God has placed us in. It's a story in which our life as a race, and all of us have a race that's a little bit different. It's a race, Hebrew 12 tells us,

that's been marked out for us. That means that no race course is the same. Some of us are married and some of us are single. Some of us are in business. Some of us are school teachers. some of us are mission work, some of us are stay-at-home moms, some of us have wealth, some of us are in poverty, some of us are in middle class, some races are longer than others, some races last until you're in old age. Other races finish much quicker because people die earlier.

You don't know exactly what is ahead in your race. All you know is that it's a race that's marked out for you by God. And that means you can't compare your race with other peoples, because they might be running uphill when you're running downhill. But just around the curve that you can't quite see around, you're going to have to start running uphill and they're going to be running downhill. So comparing your race to someone else's doesn't quite make sense because God has marked it out for you. And this race God has put us in, it's a marathon, not a sprint. That's why Hebrews 12 tells us that we'll need to persevere. We will need to endure. The way we do that is to fix our eyes on Jesus. It says for the joy set before him, he endured the cross. We must fix our eyes on him and the joy he has placed in front of us. Otherwise, we will give up. Otherwise, we will quit. Otherwise, we will look for a shortcut. Otherwise, we will just sit down. We won't keep running.

In 1952, a woman named Florence Chadwick stepped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean off Catalina Island. She was determined to swim to the shore of mainland California. She had already been the first woman to swim the English Channel both ways. But the weather on this particular day was foggy and chilly. She could barely see the boats that were near her accompanying. her on her swim. Still, she swam for 15 hours. When she begged to give up, begged to be taken out of the water and pulled into her boat, her mother who was traveling in that boat, told her, look, you're close. You can make it. You just got to keep going. But physically and emotionally exhausted,

Florence Chadwick called it quits. She stopped swimming. She was pulled out. It wasn't until she was in the boat that she realized she was less than a half mile away. At the news conference the next day, she said this. All I could see was the fog. I think if I could have seen the shore, I would have made it. We've got to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus. When other things get in the way like a fog, when we don't fix our eyes on Jesus because we stop worshipping with others on Sunday morning,

when we stop attending small group, when we stop reading our Bible and everything else get to, in our view except Jesus, we have a tendency to quit. But like Florence Chadwick, if we could have seen the shore, if we could have seen Jesus, we would have kept on running. God's story tells us that we're in a race that one day will end and then we'll be in the presence of God forever. Everything we do here, everything you do has meaning, everything is important, every person you come contact with is significant. Every minute counts. Every hardship you endure has a reason behind it. God calls you to run the race. He's marked out with you. To run it with endurance, to win the

prize of Jesus. To finish this race, fix your eyes on him. He is the prize. He is worth it. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps others find this podcast more easily. Also ask yourself who you could share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.