Day 2906 of the 7 day Bible verse challenge.

Hebrews 3:14 NIV

To the very end.

But, how far are we actually willing to go? Through what are we willing to go?

As we’ve been discussing for some time now, struggle and strife are a promise of life regardless of what we claim to believe in. Pain and problems are simply a part of our story, and they’re not erased or eased simply because we purchase a Bible or adorn ourselves with a shiny cross. There is absolutely nothing about the Gospel that promises immediate peace through the immunity to suffering. In fact, to share in Christ is not just to share in the hope of eternal life.

To share in Christ is also to share in suffering.

Unfortunately, the strains of life are often allowed to serve as reasons or excuses to bail well before the very end. In fact, our inclination toward only that which pleases and satisfies and comforts and consoles has left us almost entirely unable to press forward. Whenever faced with anything that can in any way be considered scary or painful or difficult, we race back toward our safe places where we’re not required to put our faith into action and blaze into the storm.

But if our faith is such that it can’t weather a little rain or endure a bit of heat or hold up against an altogether insignificant moment of light testing, then how is it that we believe? Or rather, what is it that we believe?

Do we believe that our faith is there to make things easy just because we prefer things that are easy? Do we view our faith as a means to the pleasurable stay we’d highly prefer enjoy? Is our faith simply a token of our hope in eternal salvation without the slightest hint of the necessity to sacrifice anything in order to reach that hope?

If we are to truly be the Christians we claim to want to be, then to share in Christ is the ultimate goal, the main priority, the true prize held within a life of faith. It’s our chance to run this race called life to win a prize that doesn’t fade or get lost or remain behind when we leave this place. To share in Christ is our only hope as His is the only Name by which we must be saved.

But what does it mean to share in Christ? That question is one that we could spend forever discussing as the messages and truths and power contained within our Savior are truly without limit. He is more than we can understand. But just because we can’t contain Him within our minds does not mean that we shouldn’t try to know more of Him with each passing day.

Sadly, to our true detriment, we set ourselves up for failure in our approach to learning and understanding. And so it’s really no surprise that it seems as if we’ve managed to miss the plot of the Gospel. Much of His story is one of suffering and sacrifice. And so for us to share in Christ, well, that means we’ll have to share in those things which we’d rather avoid, ignore, simply pretend don’t exist as they really bring us down from this high of life on which we enjoy riding.

As humans we tend to run away from things that scare us. We avoid discussing topics that make us feel uncomfortable. We attempt to cozy everything up to where it doesn't pose any real threat to our identity, our well-being, our self-centered sense of worth. We gear our lives around only those things which seem most personally beneficial, and in turn we ignore or downplay all that stands against our personal gain.

Be it comfort, popularity, wealth, status, influence, success of any kind, we've learned to far prioritize the things in life that add the kind of value and power and gain that we've been taught to seek for ourselves. And so, when we look at the cross, when we recount the Gospel, when we think of Jesus, our minds that are so used to rationalizing everything from a worldly point of view in order to make it appeal to us and our goals and our priorities are left scrambling to make it make sense.

It’s truly a message too massive for minds that have been watered down by worldly concerns. It’s the all-encompassing story of an all-knowing, all-loving, all-powerful God who humbled Himself and came to this earth in the form of His creation in order to walk alongside us and remind us of the true necessity in adhering our lives to His perfect standards and commandments and expectations. And to take it a step further, He chose to endure the cross in order to both fully satisfy the wrath we earned in all our sinful errors and to fully hammer home the love that He has that ought to inspire us to leave those wicked ways behind for good.

It’s the death, burial and resurrection. That is what we are called to share in in order to share in Christ. It isn’t just the hope of eternal life. It’s also a worldly death. It’s not just the promise of peace. It’s the endurance of misery that makes that peace perfect. It is not simply a concept that exists to make us comfortable and bring us unending and untested happiness. It’s a promise that we too will face strife in this place. But that the strife we face cannot alter His ultimate promise.

And that’s what we’ve been going over for quite some time now. It’s the realization that we’ve been called to share in the full Christian experience. To die to sin. To die to self. To leave our old ways behind. To be reborn into this new life spent seeking to serve the One who came to serve us with Himself. It’s the opportunity to entirely alter our lives so that they no longer remain bound by the inevitability of death.

It’s to take up our cross as well and actually follow Him into the grave, enduring the suffering involved in setting our souls free from the sinful prisons we’ve built around them.

It’s the understanding that pain and suffering will in fact be a part of this journey. But sadly, in our watering down of faith into a comfort-holding, gain-offering idea, we’ve began losing sight of the promise that in this world we will have trouble. We will have struggles. We will face pain and persecution and problems all founded upon our clear refusal to any longer accept the hollow ways of a fallen humanity.

The issues come in that we don't really struggle with the concepts of God or faith or trust or even eternity. We can at least begin contemplating such grand mindscapes. But when it comes to pain or loss or sacrifice or selflessness or humility or death, well, we just try to keep all of those at a comfortable distance. We avoid them at all costs because to minds that have been corrupted by this need for worldly gain, the idea of suffering or misery or losing something just doesn't seem necessary to consider when we could use that time seeking more of the things that make us feel good.

And so humanity looks at the cross, listens to the Gospel, sits in church and sings all the worship songs with what may very well be a heart that's mostly disinterested in delving into the true cost of the faith we say we have. We run the risk of remaining a people apart from God simply because the gap between us demands our willingness to sacrifice the ties that bind us to the worldly lives we’ve always known, and therefore find plenty comfortable.

We risk falling short of fully sharing in Christ all because that cost it carries involves pain and sacrifice and even that commonly dreaded d-word.

Whether we like it or not, death is a very clear aspect of our faith, and so it’s something that we will have to contend with at some point. And if we’re wise, we’ll make that point today as our bodily death may arrive tomorrow. And if we die without dying to self, then we’ll find ourselves no bridge to the eternity in which we claim to hope.

But what's sadly strange about all this is that we found that joyful hope when we first saw the cross and learned the story about this Man named Jesus. We knew we'd finally found that hope that all our prior hopeless pursuits could never offer. We knew that we'd finally washed up on shore of a promise that we could rely on, could trust in, could actually build a life upon that would stand up to the wind and waves of chaos that have not and will never disappear as long as we walk this earth.

And in those opening moments of our excited embracing of that newfound hope in change that led to a promise worth chasing, we had this willingness to do whatever it took to find more, to learn more, to know more of this one they call Christ.

But wouldn't you know it, the normality of life slowly began rising back to the surface. That excitement began to wane. The joy of this new hope started to fade. The old lives and old problems and old goals and old ways of everything started creeping back in. And eventually, we found ourselves back in those same old ruts that we thought we could leave behind. We looked in the mirror and realized we still looked the same. We were faced with a miserable situation and found that we still responded the same.

Our human anger, and human limits, and human struggles don’t disappear simply because we proclaim faith. And the fact that life as we knew it is still there with all the pains and problems causes our distraction from the prize that we know is waiting at the end of this road.

Be it impatience or doubt or a simple lack of perseverance, that initial conviction slowly fades away behind the mundanity of daily life in this place. We still have bills to pay, appointments to cross off, cars to wash, soccer games to get to. We still have all these other things that are vying for our attention, and though we've found something truly unique and monumentally exciting, we're still surrounded by a world that tells us we can't waste too much time worrying about what's ahead when there's so much to be done today.

To the very end. Not just until something more immediately pressing comes up that needs our attention. Not just until another challenging season springs up in our lives and causes all sorts of doubt and frustration. Not just until we get bored waiting for a promise that always seems just out of reach. Not just as long as life is easy, situations are calm, circumstances are under our control.

The conviction of our faith should be such that nothing else is able to contend with its priority in our lives. It’s a confidence that should constantly remind us of the importance of putting Him first and refusing to allow anything to take His place or steal His praise. It’s an assurance that while much of this life still seems to matter to most, we know what matters most, and it’s not anything of this place.

Like it or not, the ultimate promise our faith holds is one that will be fulfilled upon the completion of our stay on this earth. Not before. We don’t get unchallenged peace in this place. We don’t receive immunity to illness or injury while we’re here. We don’t not get a get-out-of-problems free card with every Bible we purchase. In many ways, this road we’re on will still suck. But take heart, it sucks for all of us.

Even Jesus.

That’s part of the message of the cross, of our faith. That in this world we will have trouble, but that the trouble we have has already been overcome. That the pains we endure aren’t the end of the story. That the suffering is followed by peace. And so all that’s left for us is to walk through the storms with that original conviction in our heart that constantly reminds us that nothing we face here can possibly change what comes next or the promises that He promised are there.

We have come to share in Christ if only we refuse to let this world change where we’re going. Do not give the problems you face, the pains you endure, the pressures you feel to fall back into the fallen embrace of a fallen creation instill doubt that keeps you from embracing the full chance to share in Christ. Our faith is a confidence that the fullness of His promises will only be fulfilled upon our exit from this world. So we cannot give up or lose heart or let go until He calls us home.

It may not be easy. It wasn’t easy for Him. May not be painless. The cross obviously wasn’t either. But if we wish to fully share in Christ, then we too must embrace the suffering that helps us fulfill our part of God’s perfect will, just as Christ did. If we stop when it gets hard or lose hope when we feel bad or let go of the conviction that He is who He says He is simply because life isn’t the perfection we kind of still wish it were, then we’re not sharing in Christ.

And simply put, if we’re not willing to share in His suffering, to share in His death, then how can we expect to share in His resurrection to eternal life?

To the very end. Suffering is not the end. Pain is not the end. Death is not the end. And that’s the promise we have in this faith of ours because it’s the truth shown in the Savior we trust in. And if we really trust in Him, then we should know He will get us through whatever may come our way. Remain convinced of that. Hold firmly that conviction. Because it’s only our trust in Him that will see us through. To the very end.

#LeaveNoSoulUntold