Here’s a message outline on Hebrews 12:1. You can download this outline below.
Passionate Patience
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.” – Hebrews 12:1 [NLT]
In 1845, the ill-fated Franklin Expedition sailed from England to find a passage across the Arctic Ocean.
The crew loaded their two sailing ships with a lot of things they didn’t need: a 1,200-volume library, fine china, crystal goblets, and sterling silverware for each officer with his initials engraved on the handles. Amazingly, each ship took only a 12-day supply of coal for their auxiliary steam engines.
The ships became trapped in vast frozen plains of ice. After several months, Lord Franklin died. The men decided to trek to safety in small groups, but none of them survived.
One story is especially heartbreaking. Two officers pulled a large sled more than 65 miles across the treacherous ice. When rescuers found their bodies, they discovered that the sled was filled with table silver.
What strengthens and encourages your relationship with Jesus? What is beneficial?
What disrupts or interrupts your relationship with Jesus? What is a hindrance?
Sin, habits, pleasures, self-indulgences, associations that hold you back, worldly cares, riches, honors, opinions, activities, possessions, relationships, careers. Anything that occupies our time, energy, affections to neglect time with the Lord and our pursuit of Christ-likeness.
Jesus is the goal of our journey and companion on the way
Go steadily forward in the race and refuse to be deflected: Hupomone (hoop-om-on-ay) – cheerful or hopeful endurance, enduring patience, patient continuance (waiting). Passionate patience – Perseverance or Patient Endurance – 2 Pet 1:6, Rev 3:10, Rev 14:12, 1 Cor 13:7, Lk 21:19
- COMMIT YOURSELF: BOLDLY CLAIM IT CAN BE DONE!! It’s already been done. Great cloud of witnesses – inspiration – motivation – what we see in them – Hebrews 11 Hall of Faith
- FOCUS ON YOUR WEAKNESS – Admit you cannot do life alone. You need Jesus. Passionately seek Him with all you have. Know Him, love Him, worship Him.Fix your eyes on Him.
- ADMIT YOU AREN’T FINISHED YET. “I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me.” – Philippians 3:12 [NLT] Passionately pursuing Jesus –Press on to the finish
- EMBRACE HARDSHIPS & STRUGGLES AND REMOVE OBSTACLES & DISTRACTIONS. Hardships are opportunities for growth. “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” –C.S. Lewis “Problem of Pain
Hebrews 12:2 Fix your eyes on Jesus
Tania Gutekunst 