Sometimes life can feel really heavy. If you look around you, are you sensing that many people are struggling and have a lot weighing on them? The people living in the 1st century, to whom the Letter to the Hebrews is written, had a lot to endure as well. I’ve had the thought in my mind a lot lately from Hebrews 10:36, “We have need of endurance.” Any good coach, knowing that a harder race is coming, will prepare their athletes well in advance so that they can endure in order to win. I would say, in the same way, a good Father in Heaven, knowing what His people need, is giving us the opportunity to build endurance in these days because of what lay ahead. Over and over in the Book of Revelation it adjures us to “endure to the end and be saved.” May we be those who endure, and take courage because Yeshua (Jesus) has overcome the world (John 16:33).
But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For,“Yet a little while, and the coming one will come and will not delay; but my righteous one shall live by faith, and if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him.” (quote from the Septuigent version of the prophet Habakkuk 2:3-4) But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.
-Hebrews 10:32-39