Hebrews 10:23
Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful.
I want to focus on the wavering part. As we go through our days, we often go in and out of our own crises. We get anxious and do what we can to fix it. We pray for help, guidance and peace. Sometimes our difficulty isn’t ours at all. It can be a “high drama” relationship. Just knowing these people is the crisis. These are the stuff of life. 1 Peter 4:12, 13 tells us, “not to be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come upon us to test us, as if something strange were happening. But to the degree that we share Christ’s suffering, keep on rejoicing…” This passage uses the word surprised. This is our reaction. God wants us to stay at peace. We are to trust Him. He promises to be with us. As we trust Him and follow His ways, we can assume that which befalls us is allowed and possibly designed by Him. It may be that He’s trying to teach us something or to reach someone. Are we at peace? If we were to look at a reading of a heart rate monitor, what would we see during these times? The peaks and valleys of the printout could follow our circumstances. That’s natural, but He wants us to be at rest. He says in Matthew 6:26 to not be anxious for our lives. “Look at the birds of the air. They do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns. Yet your Heavenly Father takes care of them. We won’t eliminate difficulties. We need to trust Him as we pass through. Isaiah 6:26 says that “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee.” As we keep our attention on our great God, the problem we encounter diminishes. However, if we focus on the problems, God has been eclipsed and our anxiety rises. We are to be busy with the repair, just as the birds are busy finding food. But the birds have a song. We also need to retain the “joy of The Lord”. This is what the passage means by not wavering. Lord, help us to keep our trust and our joy, as we go in and out of tough times.