HEBREWS 3:1-19

Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,” bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.

So, as the Holy Spirit says “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion, during the time of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors tested and tried me, though for forty years they saw what I did. That is why I was angry with that generation; I said, ‘Their hearts are always going astray, and they have not known my ways.’ So I declared on oath in my anger, ‘They shall never enter my rest.’ ”

See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.  But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.  As has just been said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.”

Who were they who heard and rebelled? Were they not all those Moses led out of Egypt? And with whom was he angry for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies perished in the wilderness? And to whom did God swear that they would never enter his rest if not to those who disobeyed?  So we see that they were not able to enter, because of their unbelief.

(New International Version)

Oh My God – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – the only true and living God, Creator of this universe, Giver and Sustainer of Life; to You and You alone I bow in jubulant praise for opening the eyes of my heart to see and know the freedom that You have granted to me. The temporary construct of this material world beckons to me while reaching out to lay hold of my heart and ensnare my soul. Lord, it is far too easy for me to fall prey to the trappings of this world and make them my idols. Part of me continues to seek the easy path of material indulgence, fleshly pleasures, and the approval of mortal men. But I know, because You, through Your word, have helped me know TRUTH… the truth that this world and everything in it are but transient and fleeting things. And though I know it to be the harder path, yet I seek to give give it all up for You; that I might seek first Your kingdom and Your righteousness and please you in all that do. Lord, don’t let me outlive my love for you and fall back under the spell of this wordly matrix. Keep me walking in paths of righteousness for Your names’ sake. Keep my eyes fixed on You and the eternal glory I know I share with You. Nothing in this world compares. And may those I love in this mortal world, and I know You know who they are, have the eyes of their hearts opened as well; that they may come alongside and share my vision, my freedom, my eternal destiny to be always and forever with You!

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