There are moments when walking with Christ feels costly—when obedience is hard, prayer seems unanswered, and faith feels more like a battle than a comfort. Hebrews reminds us that in those very moments, we are tempted to toss aside our confidence in God, as if it were something small and disposable. But what looks “optional” in the moment is actually tied to a future we can’t yet see. Today is an invitation to hold onto what your future self in eternity will be eternally grateful you refused to let go of.

Confidence You Dare Not Discard

Our verse says, “So do not throw away your confidence; it holds a great reward.” (Hebrews 10:35) That word “throw away” is strong—it pictures someone literally tossing aside what they once valued. The believers in Hebrews had already endured suffering and loss; now they were weary. Maybe you know that feeling: you’ve prayed, obeyed, kept going—and still, pressure mounts. The temptation is not usually to make some loud announcement that you’re done with faith; it’s to quietly loosen your grip and let bold, expectant trust in God slip through your fingers.

But Scripture keeps calling us to the opposite: “Let us hold resolutely to the hope we profess, for He who promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 10:23) Notice where the weight falls—not on how strong you feel today, but on how faithful He is. Your confidence is not spiritual bravado; it’s steady trust in a God who cannot lie, a Savior who did not stay in the tomb, and a Spirit who does not abandon His work halfway. When you are tempted to toss away your bold hope, remember: you’re not throwing away a feeling; you’re backing away from a faithful Person.

A Faith That Walks When It Can’t See

Confidence in Christ is tested most where we cannot see the outcome. The chapter after our verse defines faith as living by what God has said, not by what we can verify with our senses: “For we walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7) Confidence in God looks like taking the next obedient step when your emotions, circumstances, or timelines don’t cooperate. It’s trusting that the unseen God is more real than the visible storm.

That’s why Hebrews adds, “You need to persevere, so that after you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised.” (Hebrews 10:36) Notice the order: do the will of God now; receive the promise later. Our generation loves instant outcomes, but God often trains our hearts through seasons where nothing seems to be “working.” In those seasons, your confidence is refined: you learn to cling to who God is rather than to how life feels. You keep loving, serving, praying, repenting, forgiving—not because you see immediate results, but because you trust the character of the One who commanded it.

The Reward That Makes Endurance Worth It

God doesn’t say, “Just gut it out.” He ties your perseverance to a promised reward: “it holds a great reward.” (Hebrews 10:35) This is not selfish chasing of blessings; it’s taking seriously what God Himself says He will give. He speaks of a “crown of life” for those who endure: “Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love Him.” (James 1:12) Your unseen fidelity to Christ today is noticed, remembered, and will be honored by God Himself.

And even now, there is reward: deeper fellowship with Christ, a stronger, purified faith, and the quiet joy of knowing you didn’t quit on the One who never quits on you. “And let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” (Galatians 6:9) You may not see the harvest yet—in your family, your church, your heart—but your confidence in Him is never wasted. The God who began this good work in you will not abandon it midway: “being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6)

Lord Jesus, thank You for being faithful and for promising a reward to those who hold fast. Today, strengthen my heart to refuse discouragement and to walk in bold, obedient confidence in You.

THAT MANY PERSONS FIND THE BIBLE HARD to understand will not be denied by those acquainted with the facts. Testimony to the difficulties encountered in Bible reading is too full and too widespread to be dismissed lightly.

In human experience there is usually a complex of causes rather than but one cause for everything, and so it is with the difficulty we run into with the Bible. To the question, Why is the Bible hard to understand? no snap answer can be given; the pert answer is sure to be the wrong one. The problem is multiple instead of singular, and for this reason the effort to find a single solution to it will be disappointing.

In spite of this I venture to give a short answer to the question, and while it is not the whole answer it is a major one and probably contains within itself most of the answers to what must be an involved and highly complex question. 1 believe that we find the Bible difficult because we try to read it as we would read any other book, and it is not the same as any other book.

The Bible is not addressed to just anybody. Its message is directed to a chosen few. Whether these few are chosen by God in a sovereign act of election or are chosen because they meet certain qualifying conditions I leave to each one to decide as he may, knowing full well that his decision will be determined by his basic beliefs about such matters as predestination, free will, the eternal decrees and other related doctrines. But whatever may have taken place in eternity, it is obvious what happens in time: Some believe and some do not; some are morally receptive and some are not; some have spiritual capacity and some have not. It is to those who do and are and have that the Bible is addressed. Those who do not and are not and have not will read it in vain.

Right here I expect some readers to enter strenuous objections, and for reasons not hard to find. Chrisianity today is man-centered, not God-centered. God is made to wait patiently, even respectfully, on the whims of men. The image of God currently popular is that of a distracted Father, struggling in heartbroken desperation to get people to accept a Saviour of whom they feel no need and in whom they have very little interest. To persuade these self-sufficient souls to respond to His generous offers God will do almost anything, even using salesmanship methods and talking down to them in the chummiest way imaginable. This view of things is, of course, a kind of religious romanticism which, while it often uses flattering and sometimes embarassing terms in praise of God, manages nevertheless to make man the star of the show.

The notion that the Bible is addressed to everybody has wrought confusion within and without the church. The effort to apply the teaching of the Sermon

on the Mount to the unregenerate nations of the world is one example of this. Courts of law and the military powers of the earth are urged to follow the teachings of Christ, an obviously impossible thing for them to do. To quote the words of Christ as guides for policemen, judges and generals is to misunderstand those words completely and to reveal a total lack of understanding of the purposes of divine revelation. The gracious words of Christ are for the sons and daughters of grace, not for the Gentile nations whose chosen symbols are the lion, the eagle, the dragon and the bear.

Not only does God address His words of truth to those who are able to receive them, He actually conceals their meaning from those who are not. The preacher uses stories to make truth clear; our Lord often used them to obscure it. The parables of Christ were the exact opposite of the modern "illustration," which is meant to give light; the parables were "dark sayings" and Christ asserted that He sometimes used them so that His disciples could understand and His enemies could not. (See Matthew 13:10-17.) As the pillar of fire gave light to Israel but was cloud and darkness to the Egyptians, so our Lord's words shine in the hearts of His people but leave the self-confident unbeliever in the obscurity of moral night.

The saving power of the Word is reserved for those for whom it is intended. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. The impenitent heart will find the Bible but a skeleton of facts without flesh or life or breath. Shakespeare may be enjoyed without penitence; we may understand Plato without believing a word he says; but penitence and humility along with faith and obedience are necessary to a right understanding of the Scriptures.

In natural matters faith follows evidence and is impossible without it, but in the realm of the spirit faith precedes understanding; it does not follow it. The natural man must know in order to believe; the spiritual man must believe in order to know. The faith that saves is not a conclusion drawn from evidence; it is a moral thing, a thing of the spirit, a supernatural infusion of confidence in Jesus Christ, a very gift of God.

The faith that saves reposes in the Person of Christ; it leads at once to a committal of the total being to Christ, an act impossible to the natural man. To believe rightly is as much a miracle as was the coming forth of dead Lazarus at the command of Christ.

The Bible is a supernatural book and can be understood only by supernatural aid.

Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned, and done that which is evil in Thy sight. - Psalm 51:4

Do not let us lose ourselves in generalities. All means each, and each means me. We all know how hard it is to bring general truths to bear with all their weight upon ourselves. That is an old common phase. "All men think all men mortal but themselves"; and we are quite comfortable when this indictment is kept in the general terms of universality - " all have sinned." Suppose I sharpen the point a little - God grant that the point may get to some indurated conscience! - suppose, instead of reading " All have sinned," I beseech each one of my readers to strike out the general word, and put in the individual one, and to say, " have sinned." You have to do with this indictment just as we have to do with the promises and offers of the Gospel - wherever there is a "whosoever, " put your pen through it, and write your own name over it. The blank cheque is given to us in regard of the promises and offers, and we have to fill in our own names. The charge is handed to us in regard to this indictment, and if we are wise we shall write our own names there, too. I leave this on your conscience, and I will venture to ask that you would put to yourself the question, " Is it I?" And sure I am that, if you do, you will see a finger pointing out of the darkness, and hear a voice sterner than that of Nathan saying, " Thou art the man."

The people in one crowd that gathered about Christ were not all diseased. Some of them He taught; some of them He cured; but that crowd, where healthy men mingled with cripples, is no type of the condition of humanity. Rather, we are to find it in that Pool of Bethesda, with its five porches, wherein lay a multitude of impotent folk, tortured with varieties of sickness, and none of them sound. Blessed be God! we are in Bethesda, which means " house of mercy," and the Fountain that can heal is perpetually springing up beside us all. There is a disease which affects and infects all mankind - sin. Sin is universal, and it is personal - " have sinned."

I ask you to go into the depths of your own heart, and to be honest in recalling your own experience, and to say if, notwithstanding all the gladness of a godless life, there does not lie, grim and silent for the most part, but there, and felt to be there all the same, a great yearning and consciousness of unrest. Every good has in it some fatal flaw and incompleteness. There is always a break in the circle; always a stone missing out of the bracelet. There is always one unlighted window in the Aladdin’s palace. There is always a Mordecai sitting dark as a thunder-cloud and nonparticipant of the common emotion, who makes Haman say, "All this availeth nothing." There is always disappointment in earthly fruition. The fish never proves so big when it is lying panting on the grass as it did in the water, when the fisher was struggling with it. The chase is always better than the capture. In all earthly good there is a fatal disproportion between it and the heart that seeks to solace itself with it; so that after all satisfactions, there is the old cry of the heart, "I hunger still." And, above all, there is the certainty which pushes itself in- like the skeleton at the feasts of the Egyptian kings, or the mocking slave that walked behind the conqueror in his triumph as he went up the steps of the capitol - the certainty that we have to leave them all behind us. And what is the naked soul going to do when it "flares forth into the dark? "