Consider Him - Hebrews 12:3

"For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls."

Some of the hardest tests in our walk of faith are the criticisms and rejection of others. We may think we're not really affected by these, but all of us are. Particularly when the judgments come from people we admire, or from those who are our own friends and family, we can find ourselves quickly becoming "weary and discouraged."

The wise response, according to the author of Hebrews, is to put this process into perspective. I am on a race track (12:1), running a custom-crafted course that has been laid out from all eternity specifically for me. There are weights I must cast off, snares I must resist, and endurance I must learn, or I will never finish my race.

The hostilities of others are testing points. They test whether I have become more thrilled by the "joy set before me" (12:2), or whether I am still seeking joy from earthly sources. The affirmation of others is very exhilarating, and thus it can be a very powerful distraction away from that eternal joy at the end of my race.

One might think, then, that God would help us out a bit by making the future joy clear and easy to see. But, we are told, that's not exactly His first thought. Instead, He disciplines us. Verses 5 and 6 actually use even stronger words: "chasten," and "rebuke," and "scourge," which means to beat with a whip. We are put in a position where we must choose between being directed by the rebukes of God or by the admiration of our friends. It is indeed a very difficult spot.

The solution to this challenge is always the same. "Consider Him." Oh, you might say, but Jesus never had to be disciplined. He always chose to obey His Father. Well, amazingly, that's not what the scripture tells us. In Hebrews 5:8 we learn that "though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered." He too had to endure earthly pain. He too had to choose between His earthly family and His heavenly Father (see Matthew 12:46-50), and it may not have been exactly easy for Him either.

The difference, we are told, was that Jesus truly understood the "joy that was set before Him." He knew what heaven was. He knew His Father. But perhaps most importantly, He knew what awaited Him at the end of His race (which is, I believe, the same destination toward which our individual races are headed). Jesus never lost sight of the glorious union He would one day enjoy with His beautiful, perfected Bride.

If we can understand this, we will not be discouraged by our testings. For in fact, these are precisely the means whereby our loving Father is preparing us for His Son. When we are willing to trade our present joys for an unseen future joy, we will gradually discover that God provides us with another gift for which we do NOT need to wait. It's something called peace.

"Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it" (12:11).