Hebrews Chapter 11

This is hands down one of my favorite chapters in the Bible, definitely my favorite in Hebrews. The main focus of this chapter is....drum roll please......faith. No duh. I think you get that about three verses in. But it's easy to get lost in what is said in this passage. I always affectionately refer to this chapter as the "Hall of Faith" because it's like walking through the Hall of Fame for people that, you know, have faith. This chapter basically serves as a SparkNotes version of the Old Testament. So it's a good review. But the meat of this chapter comes at the end, from verses 32 to 40.

What we see here is two-fold. First, we see the insurmountable power of faith. With faith in God all things are possible, even moving mountains. But faith is not something that is easily come by. With our faith in something unseen and our convictions about our faith, we are often put in a position on the outskirts of the cultural norm. Because of our faith, we are weird, abnormal. And that's hard to deal with sometimes because it sets us up for persecution because of "differentness". We have to be prepared for that. Though Christians in America have it much better than our Early Church peers (no crucifixion, no roasting alive, no drawn and quartering, etc), there are still Christians in other parts of the world who still need to fear death for their faith. Yet still they believe. And that is a testament to how we should be living.

The second thing we see in this section is that, as great as what all these Old Testament juggernauts did, it was not good enough and God's plan wasn't complete. It still needed that extra something special, but that something special could not come from man. It had to come from above. And what's awesome about that is that Jesus' life on Earth gives us even more reason to have faith in God. He was a living, breathing witness of God's love, His eternal, ever-lasting, all-compassing, giant bear hug love.