Hold Fast

DEVOTION 

TO HEBREWS

HOLD FAST

Heb 3:7-15

7 So, as the Holy Spirit says: "Today, if you hear his voice, 8 do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the desert, 9 where yourfathers tested and tried me and for forty years saw what I did. 10 That is why I was angry with that generation, and I said, 'Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.' 11 So I declared on oath in my anger, 'They shall never enter my rest.'"   12 See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today, so that none of you may be hardened by sin's deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly till the end the confidence we had at first. 15 As has just been said: "Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion."  

NIV

Confident that we will not turn back, as the Israelites did because of disbelief in the Almighty Power of God, there is one more thing we need to do as we move forward with God to the place he wants us to go. We are to encourage one another daily, as long as it is called Today. We will get to the reason but first, we need to examine the word encourage. The Greek word, parakaleoo, has a varied meaning depending on how it is used. First, it is to call to one’s side, however, secondly, when speaking or addressing another, it means to admonish, exhort, console, encourage, and strengthen by consolation, to comfort, instruct, and teach. That is a lot to do with each other as believers. We do not understand that we do not witness this behavior within the church as normal. It seems to us that we see too many individuals who stay in their own pew, maybe a pun is intended. We wonder if we each become overly invested in our own lives, to invest any effort to encourage, with all its definitions, another believer. Maybe we are just too afraid to be as honest or transparent with each other as we should in order so we can exhort, console, encourage, strengthen, and comfort each other. We all need to be encouraged to keep the faith, but we also need that strengthening and comforting, in the truth, as we all go through struggles from time to time in this life. However, the expressed reason for all this exhorting and encouraging is so that each of us will not become hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. There are so many ways in which this deceitfulness can creep in, it might be possible we do not even see it for what it is and before we realize we have been deceived, thus harden to this sin within us. Just as some examines, we can think of becoming too invested in our laws, or rules and regulations we miss grace. We start thinking too much about how much we do and are too concerned about our own benefit, or getting recognition for our great works. However, another sneaky deception is gossip, which is mostly generated by thinking more highly of ourselves than we should, which is another of those deceptions we should be on guard against and need the encouragement of others to stay on the right path. There are just too many ways we can get distracted from the way we should live, it would take a book to explore them all, such as this author to the Hebrews has done. We all need to hold firmly to the end just as we had that confidence at the start of our life in Christ. Let us not get distracted but stay the course. Our faith needs to be strong if not stronger than ever before. Let us hold fast.