Keep On Running – Hebrews 12:1-17 | Video Devotion with Dave Miers
Dec 8, 2025 6603
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An Uphill Challenge
Do you feel like you’re limping?
Maybe you’re weary. Many of us are familiar with feelings of weariness – the exhaustion of a demanding job, the pressures of family life, the struggles in our Christian walk. So often, life can feel like an uphill challenge.
How can I keep going? How can I endure? How can I keep on running?
Opening the Passage
This week we’re in Hebrews 12:1-17. This passage answers that question with three movements: we endure like Christ, we endure as sons, and we endure in community.
The original recipients were Jewish Christians facing pressure and persecution. There was a temptation to go back to the old covenant, the old way of doing things. The message, time after time, is do not go back, because Jesus is better.
But even when we know Jesus is better, there’s still the call to endure. To press on. Not to give up, not to go back, but to keep running.
Eyes On Jesus
First, we endure like Christ. Verse 1: “Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”
Anyone can start a race. The key is finishing. Anyone can start the Christian life. But the call in scripture is to press on until the end. Endure until the end.
Notice it says lay aside every weight and sin. It’s not just putting sin to death. What are the things weighing us down that may not be sin in themselves? Before you run a race, you take off your tracksuit. The tracksuit isn’t a sin – it keeps you warm. But for the race, you take it off.
I recently listened to a podcast featuring an interview with a man who once walked the Camino de Santiago – about 800 kilometres through France and Spain. He packed carefully, felt well-prepared. But after a few days, he’s throwing things out of his backpack. In the end: shoes, two pairs of socks, two pairs of undies, one pair of shorts, two t-shirts. Not much else. He wanted to be as light as possible.
What does that look like in the Christian life? Phones we pick up again and again. Screen time that soars. What are the distractions weighing us down from following Jesus?
Verse 2 shows us we do this by “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”
He endured the cross. His goal was to get there and die for the sins of the world. He took the shame for our sin upon himself. Yet he rose from the dead and is now seated at the right hand of God. His sacrifice is once and for all. He says from the cross, “It is finished.”
The encouragement as we run is to look to Jesus. We follow him who has already done everything we need.
Loved And Disciplined
Second, we endure as sons. In verses 5 and 6 we read, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves…”
The difficulty and need to endure is one of the things that show God is with you. Verse 7: “God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?”
Hardship, trials, discipline – these show you’re legitimate children of God. You belong to your Father.
Verse 10 reveals God’s heart for us when it says, “He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.”
I don’t think we often think of hard things as loving discipline from our Heavenly Father. But the presence of difficulties is evidence that God is at work in you.
Anyone who’s been a Christian for a while can look back at really horrendous situations. You didn’t think there was any way out. And yet you can see the hand of God. His grace. How he sustained you in your lowest moment, enabled you to endure.
Stronger Together
Third, we endure in community. How do we endure? Together. We’re not solo Christians.
In verse 12-13 is says, “Therefore lift your drooping hands and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.”
There’s an invitation to be strengthened, to keep walking, to be healed. To be at peace with everyone. To strive together for holiness.
We keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, we know our Father’s loving work in our lives, and we run together, striving to live a holy life. Iron sharpens iron. We change together. We’re transformed together.
Verse 15: “See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God; that no “root of bitterness” springs up and causes trouble.”
We’re in this together. We encourage each other to embrace holiness. We help each other flee from bitterness that spreads and spreads.
The Good News Is…
The good news is that Jesus has already run this race and finished the work. We follow him who endured the cross and is now seated at God’s right hand. Our loving Father disciplines us not because he’s abandoned us, but because we’re his beloved children. He’s making us holy, producing the peaceful fruit of righteousness in us. And we don’t run alone – we carry one another, strengthen the weak, and press on together toward the finish line.
Reflection
Where do you feel like you’re limping today? How can you fix your eyes more firmly on Jesus this week?
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