Taken from a post publishing tomorrow.

The previous chapter ends with heroes of faith. They are in Heaven, retired competitors who now sit in the stands as spectators watching us finish our endurance events here on earth. Jews living in Rome would have been quick to recognize this imagery from the Colosseum. Endurance racing required a long course in conditioning, and then stripping off the excess clothing to run unhindered. Shed your fleshly nature. The goal is coming face to face with Christ in death.

He's the one who laid out the course, having passed through all the trials Himself. Now He sits at the right hand of the Father, watching us in the Colosseum as we strive to honor Him. We aren't facing anything He didn't already handle.

Nobody is going to chase you through the course. If you don't desire the prize more than life itself, no one can make you do it. People of faith are driven from within. How you react to the trials and sorrows will reflect the inner discipline of pushing through the limits of the flesh.

What the Christian Hebrews in Rome had faced so far was relatively easy, mostly social pressure. They had not yet faced organized government oppression in the name of Christ. No one had shed blood in His name yet, but that day was coming. He called for His followers to carry their own crosses. This is what pleases the Father. Did not our earthly parents do the best they could to prepare us for adult life by punishing bad behavior? The discipline of the Cross is not just a reasonable estimate; it is guaranteed in our best interest.

Only sick and twisted minds enjoy pain. This is not a call to masochism, but to help you understand that the flesh will fight you, seeking to keep you enslaved to its lusts. We want in on what Jesus accomplished on the Cross. We want to heal our weak, injured and indolent spirits so that we can push on to the final prize.

Stop catering to the flesh. Don't you understand that this was how Esau lost it all? Jews always spit when saying his name. He trashed his divine inheritance in favor of the desires of the flesh, and no price could win it back later when he realized what he had lost. Don't join him.

The Covenant of Christ is not rooted in dark and fearful experiences at Sinai. We don't have to worry about facing a mountain shrouded in smoke, bristling with lightning and booming sounds that drove humans mad with fear. We come to a different mountain, more like Zion, but the Zion in Heaven. Instead of deafening thunder that shakes us to our bones, it's a choir of angels singing His glory. It's an entirely different kind of covenant focused on love and mercy. His blood at the Cross speaks more dearly to the heart of God than Abel's blood that called to Him from the ground.

Whose voice is calling to you now? Haggai 2:6 declared that Messiah would change everything, fulfilling implications of God's promises that Israel had not fully grasped. If the ear-shattering voice of the earth carried such authority in warning against sin, how much more the voice that speaks from Heaven? It's not just rattling the ground, but Heaven itself trembles at His voice.

How can you put so much faith in something that was designed to pass away, and ignore what God promised was eternal? When He judges sin like a consuming fire, what will be left? If you cling to the covenant of this world, you will perish with it.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

Because the Cross freed us from the prison of the flesh, we can walk by faith. That word "faith" has seen vast abuse; it is not simply beliefs, ideas or ideology. It refers to your personal submission to Christ as Lord. It is equivalent to the word "commitment".

People read this chapter in English as if it were soaring rhetoric that moves the emotions. That misses the whole point. The first thing our author tells us that your commitment provides all the certainty you need to embrace His covenant promises. It's the assurance and substance of things your flesh cannot see. It trumps your intellect, your senses and reason. It answers the questions you don't even know to ask.

It has been around since the beginning. The saints of old found peace with God that way, and He testified of His approval of them. We can grasp how the physical world was completed as a poor shadow of the preceding spiritual realm. By faith Abel's offering was accepted by God; Cain had no faith and was rejected. Abel's life is long gone, but his faith still testifies. God's approval of Enoch was readily apparent, and his faith kept him from seeing death

Without faith it is not possible to even approach God, much less be at peace with Him. Noah was moved by faith to build that ark and save his family from something no one had ever seen, nor could have imagined.

Through this kind of radical commitment, Abraham left his ancient homeland and acted on a promise of land and inheritance that was never visible to his eyes. A nomad his whole life on the land he was promised, he was certain of his home in Heaven. When both he and his wife were almost a century old, they conceived a son based on this promise of descendants like the stars in the night sky. It was some centuries later that Abraham's descendants claimed the land, but several generations of patriarchs who never lived to see that result kept their commitments by faith in the promise.

Faith like theirs makes you an alien to this world itself. It was this kind of faith that led Abraham to offer his son of the promise, prepared to see him raised from the dead, since he was so sure God would fulfill His commitments. It was this faith by which Isaac foretold the lives of his sons. And in a later generation, Joseph prophesied that his nation would someday claim that homeland and ordered that his bones be kept ready for the move so he could be buried there.

This commitment caused Moses' parents to hide him, and later led Moses to renounce his royal privileges as having been raised in Pharaoh's courts. He vastly preferred to embrace the fate of his nation based on just the promises of God that their future was richer than his past. The nation kept the Feast of Sparing and were spared. Moses didn't fear to face the risk of escaping Egyptian slavery with Pharaoh's troops on his heels. Instead, the nation marched across the dry seabed, but those troops were drowned.

Through faith in a silly ritual march, the city of Jericho was destroyed. Meanwhile, Rahab escaped because of her commitment. And there were countless others whose very lives were miracles of faith. Some saw lives of power and others faced death by the same power -- some of those deaths quite grisly. They endured because they were committed to God's glory in this world.

How many times did it appear that God didn't keep His promises for this life? His promises are eternal in nature. This life is supposed to be horrible; it's only for His glory that we don't receive all the sorrows that our fleshly natures deserve. All the good things we reap in this life from His Covenant are mere shadows of His promises in Heaven.

For the time being, I'm putting the Radix Fidem Blog asleep. Anything I want to write or pictures I want to share will be here on the forum.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.

I do have a prayer request for myself - in the last two weeks, I have had four tests related to my carotid arteries and heart.  Through a series of events, beginning with that baby shower on Sept. 29th and a visit to the ER, the Lord has pushed me to get checked out and I have found that I have some possibly serious health issues that I was totally unaware of until now.  My family doctor is SO good about having me do testing, but somehow these conditions snuck in unwares to all of us.  Each of the test results shows an anomaly or condition that is not good, but I'm not a doctor.

So, I could use some prayers that in the days ahead as I do one more test (heart stress test) and see a vascular surgeon (on October 25th), that the Lord will stay with me and protect me from what could turn out to be quite serious, as in a stroke or heart attack.  I have tremendous faith in Him, so I am not worried as much as I could be.  And, if my time has come, I have had almost 74 years of a good life and I am ready.  We, who believe, know what lies ahead to those who have faith and we know the promise of eternity.

Thank you all for being there for me!!

Love you.....

I found this to be a very interesting interview, she is doing her dissertation on Job at Cambridge University. 
While not stated explicitly, the whole point is to understand the poem from the vantage point of the ancient Hebrew mindset. To clarify the point of the poem by stripping away misconceptions English translations helped foster. She really came to some very good conclusions.

  https://youtu.be/ilB9n2fy6ZY?si=INi-_iNekYdUOpTr

We were born trapped in our fleshly natures. There was no way we could have broken the bondage; the flesh must die. Jesus did that for us. His death on the Cross broke the bondage and set us free to walk in the Spirit. This is what the writer of Hebrews tells his fellow Jews in Rome.

The Covenant of Moses was just a shadow of the real thing. Mount Sinai was a promise of what was to come. Blood sacrifices spoke of the price, but were not that price. They could not break the bondage of the fleshly nature. Otherwise, once free, there would have been no need to keep making the sacrifices over and over again. Though commanded by God, these rituals and sacrifices were just the shadow of redemption.

God revealed that Himself. David in Psalm 40 prophesied the truth: It wasn't a matter of those sacrifices, but of a firm commitment based on the promises of things to come. The Law of Moses was a promise of redemption. Moses himself said that what God really wanted has always been the same: our hearts. Thus, the Messiah's submission to come and simply live the Father's will was the promise of a New Covenant.

So, Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice once and for all, breaking the bondage of the flesh. Now He sits at the right hand of the Father, until such time as this New Covenant is fulfilled in His children. The New Covenant is not written in human language, but in the hearts of those children.

Following Christ to the Cross is the ultimate fulfillment of every command God had ever revealed to mankind. What the author indicates, but does not say, is his audience should stop whining about persecution in the flesh. It cannot change what Christ has done in your soul. He has broken the bondage of the flesh. Take up your cross of commitment and sacrifice, endure with patience, do His will in the face of sorrow and death. Encourage each other to endure and keep pulling together as a family. That's what it means to follow Christ.

Now that the bondage is broken, you are free to walk away from sin and defilement. You would have to willfully seek out disobedience; there's no further cleansing that can help you. Are you trying to provoke God's wrath?

Back when these Hebrew Christians first came to Christ some decades ago, they were willing to endure some persecution in defiance of Jewish authorities. They understood being released from the bondage to this life and its trappings. Are they now going to fold under Roman persecution?

He quotes from Habakkuk 2 about how God operates on a different time frame, yet He never fails to act. When God comes to deliver, He will be searching for those who were faithful in waiting until He was ready to act. We get the feeling the writer sensed that the opportunity to slide back into the safety of the Talmud would end soon when Rome would destroy the Temple.

Don't turn tail and hide in Judaism; Rome will destroy that, too. What's left will never be the same.

We are participating in our weekly prayer time at 5pm EST. Check out the prayer request forum for some prayer topics, but feel free to lift up your own.

You may also fast. There's no obligation or guidelines to how you should do it, or if you should do it at all. Just fast as the Lord leads and speaks to your convictions.