WordLive - Year OneSample

Prepare: Some activities, like cooking, can be finished quite quickly. Others, like embroidery, take many small repeated actions to finish. Reflect on how this relates to your walk with God.

Looking back, looking forward
Encouragement to continue being faithful opens and closes these verses, as they look back and look forward. We’re reminded of how God rested after his work of creation was completed, and how it pointed to the blessing of the end times. We’re encouraged that as believers we start to experience that blessing now (v 3) and that it’s still available for others to enter into.

However, the warning of Saturday’s reading still rings in the ears; the author is eager that the Hebrews keep up to the mark (v 1) and do all they can to be in the place of rest (v 11). The sense of concern to experience all that God has for them is strong, as is the reminder that disobedience stops people from experiencing it (v 6).

Step by step
To change a well-known Chinese saying, a journey of a thousand miles contains many single steps. Being faithful to Christ is an hour-by-hour, step-by-step business.

It’s achieved through small decisions to put him first every day as well as the large, life-changing ones. It’s achieved in ordinary daily life much more than in extraordinary happenings. And when we trip up, asking for forgiveness is part of it too.

Respond: It’s become popular to refer to life, or particular experiences in life, as a journey. Where are you in your Christian journey?

http://www.wordlive.org/Session/Classic/2012-02-27