730 The Struggle Against Sin - Hebrews 12:3-4

Where are you in the struggle against sin? 

Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One podcast. I came to this next set of passages that we're going to study by focusing on the word discipline. I need more discipline and there are areas of my life where I constantly let myself off the hook, so I find myself in Hebrews 12. Today, our verses are verse three and verse four, and I'm reading from the English Standard Version of the Bible." For consider Him, who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, so that you won't grow weary and give up. In struggling against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding  blood."

Again, that's Hebrews 12:3-4 from the ESV.  So I've spoken a few weeks back episode, 675 and 676, were about Hebrews 12:1-2, and I didn't want to go through that again. So if you'd like to hear those two verses, you can go listen to those, podcast episodes. But the author of Hebrews goes from this effort of Jesus, how He focused on the joy that was set before Him so that he could endure the cross, and then he turns to this challenge to people and he's encouraging us to consider Jesus who endured such hostilities so that we won't grow weary and give up. 

Jesus had to endure great pain and great suffering as God of the universe He died on the cross for us. He took our place. So for us in struggling against sin, the author reminds us we have not yet resisted to the point of shedding our blood. I don't know how far you've gone in the struggle against sin, but I don't go very far. I disappoint myself often.  and how easily I overeat and how quickly I give myself a pass and don't exercise.

I don't do things to discipline myself. I constantly give myself excuses. I don't struggle very hard against sin. I don't struggle very hard against laziness or slothfulness, and maybe you don't have that problem. I know people who don't seem to have that problem in certain areas, but I believe we all have it in some areas.

What's your area like? Where do you just avoid the struggle against sin? I remember sitting around talking one time in a class and we were talking about what we struggled with and I said, you know, I don't struggle with many of those things at all. I just give up on the front end. I think God calls us to struggle for these things. The cost of growing in our faith is high because the consequences of our sins are great. We are struggling because we have created a great problem in the world. We broke this world that God created, and now you and I are trying to become God's agents in it. We've been called into this role where we can serve other people and help Him to become visible, help His strategy to break through the difficulties of our world.

Today, I want to challenge us as followers of Jesus. Let's not give up on our struggle against sin. We have not resisted to the point of shedding our blood. So let's go a little further. We can always go a little more. I want to challenge myself to go a little more in the areas where Jesus brings this conviction to mind,  and I want to challenge you in the same way. We're gonna go through the next few verses of this section, just because I want to concentrate on discipline. 

Let's discipline ourselves. Our obedience becomes a benefit to us. We will learn more about this in the coming days. Let's exercise discipline today, and practice ways that we can serve the people that we work with so that Jesus might be glorified.

One way we do that is through our online community at Follower of One. Go to https://community.followerofone.org and sign up and join us on the next marketplace mission trip. This is a two-week exercise to help us be more intentional about the way that we live our faith. Check it out at https://community.Followerofone.org.

Thank you very much.