What helps you trust when you feel anxious or afraid? A song? A whispered prayer? Memorized Scripture? Gathering with other believers to worship? Reading a biography? Intentionally looking and listing in writing where you saw God in your day? Sitting quietly in God’s presence for a few moments with eyes closed and hands open, breathing deeply, and returning to God’s command, “Be still and know that I am God”?

One thing that’s helping me these days is hanging out with the “heroes” of Hebrews 11 as I memorize the chapter. I’m grateful to be reminded that we’re surrounded by a great cloud of fellow believers who, in a host of difficult times and situations, fixed their eyes on God and kept taking the next step of faith even when, year after year, they didn’t receive the things God had promised.

Standing back, I’m in awe of the things they did receive through faith: people raised from the dead, a whole nation walking through the sea on dry land while their pursuers drowned, the mouths of ravenous lions shut. What God brought about as they trusted is astounding.

Extraordinary people?

But then I look again, and, mixed in with battles and martyrdom are hints that, in many cases at least, these weren’t extraordinary people who knew they were performing extraordinary feats. These were ordinary people turning to God again and again in their weakness and fear and choosing to trust and take the next step. And in God’s hands, their choice to take that step changed families and countries in dramatic ways.

• Some quietly offered their daily work to God, listening for what would please God (v. 4).
• Others put in the decades of sweat and tears to create what God told them to create (v. 7).
• One older couple walked through a long journey of infertility and, later, a heart-wrenching life-and-death decision involving their only, and deeply beloved, child (v. 11-12, 17-19).
• Others spoke blessing over their children and grandchildren, made funeral arrangements, and carried on worshiping as they neared the end of their lives (v. 20-22).
• One young couple, like most parents, saw that their newborn “was no ordinary child.” So they did what parents do, fighting in quiet, hidden ways to protect their baby (v. 23).
• When that baby grew up, he left behind his upbringing in a setting of immense power and privilege and chose to identify with the oppressed rather than the oppressor. He acted for change rather than enjoying a comfortable life (v. 24-26).
• Some showed particular hospitality (v.31).
• Others administered justice (v. 33).
• Many, like one in seven of our brothers and sisters today, were tortured, facing jeers and flogging, imprisonment and even death for their faith (v. 35-38).
• And perhaps all of them at one time or another cried out to God in awareness of their own deep weakness, and found their weakness turned to strength (v. 34).

They made choices that ranged from very simple to profoundly costly—and I’m guessing that most of them would say, “I’m no different than you. I just did what I had to do in the midst of daily life.”

Grace!

The choice of people on this list feels like such grace to me. Yes, they did many things that seemed impossible through God’s empowering and His acts on their behalf. And also, even these people who made it to the Hebrews 11 “Hall of Faith” were sometimes very un-faith-full.

• Sarah laughed when God told her she was going to bear a child, and then lied about it (Gen 18:12,15).
• Abraham, in an attempt to protect his own skin, put his wife in a position where she could easily have been raped (Gen 12:10-20). God got them both safely out of that situation, and then Abraham did the same thing again (Gen 20:1-16).
• After God made his identity and his call unmistakably clear to Moses, Moses carried on a lengthy argument with God about how unqualified he was before he, reluctantly, agreed to proceed with the task (Ex 3:1-4:17).
• The people of Israel who “by faith . . . passed through the Red Sea as on dry land” (v. 29), in that moment of their great feat of faith “were terrified” and turned their fear on their leader: “What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? . . . It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” (Ex. 14:10-12)
• Gideon struggled with anxiety and low self-esteem, seeing himself as the most insignificant member of his family, and his clan as the weakest in Manasseh (Judges 6:15). He did what God asked of him—but he did it at night because he was afraid of his family and the townspeople (Judges 6:27). And he kept double-checking to make sure he had heard God right (Judges 6:36-40).

Some struggled in ways other than fear, too. (Or maybe, at least for some of them, their fear was simply expressed in more violent ways.)

• Moses murdered a man in his anger (Ex 2:11-12).
• David killed another in a failed attempt to cover up his affair with a married woman (2 Sam 11).
• Samson cheated on his wife, blurted crucial secrets to the prostitute in whose bed he lay, and single-handedly killed upwards of two thousand people (Judges 15:15, 16:30).
• Jephthah made a rash vow which culminated in the death of his daughter (v. 32; Judg 11:30-39).

Do you see what I see?

This isn’t a list of superheroes with spotless lives and unattainable measures of faith before whom we are called to stand in awe. This is a display of framed family photos hanging in the hallway, reminding us, “This is the blood that flows in your veins. These are your ancestors in the family of God—ordinary humans who felt doubt and fear and sometimes made really bad choices. And who also chose to keep turning their eyes back to God, moving in the direction he pointed, and refusing to settle for a comfortable life here instead of leaning into their longing for a country built by God where they would, eventually, really be at home.  

They remembered who they were: foreigners and strangers on earth, longing for their true home.

They remembered whose they were: God’s.

And they chose to listen to God’s voice and look to the promised future and take the next step, and then the next.

They chose

“Choose.” It’s my word for this year, a reminder that a life of faith, a life lived close to Jesus, is made up of hundreds of tiny, daily decisions to choose Jesus’ way rather than my own. Often I don’t choose well. But God always graciously offers a chance in the next minute to choose again. And again. And again.

Looking again at our ancestors in Hebrews 11, so much of their choosing to trust and to act out of that faith seems related to where they were looking:

• “He was looking forward to the city with foundations. . .” (v. 10).
• “They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. . .” (v. 13).
• “People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own” (v. 14).
• “He was looking ahead to his reward” (v. 26).
• “He persevered because he saw him who is invisible” (v. 27).

 At the end of this list of people who looked and saw and trusted and followed is the reminder that even Jesus did what he did at least partly because of where he was looking—toward the joy set before him. And we, too, are called to join Jesus and this great family to which we belong in looking long and deeply in the direction that helps us live faithfully.

As the global church begins the season of Lent today—this season of walking with Jesus toward the cross—may we, together, fix our eyes once again on Jesus and remember whose we are.

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart” (Heb 12:1-3, bold mine).

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Photo by Alex Shute on Unsplash.