Hebrews 12:1-13

• Share any reflections you have from lasts week's bible study (or Sunday's sermon) on fuelling your affections.

• Have you experienced any change (even a small change) in the affections of your heart this week?

Read Hebrews 12:1-3

• In these verses we see the analogy of a running race being used to describe the Christian life. Have you experienced any of these things in your own life?

  • A great cloud of witnesses cheering you on

  • Things that hinder you and slow you down

  • The race as a long-distance run, requiring endurance and patience

  • The need to fix your eyes on Jesus (and not on other things)

• How exactly does the example of Jesus (the 'race' he ran) help us to not grow weary and lose heart?

Read Hebrews 12:4-13

• How do you feel about the idea that God is disciplining you through your experiences of hardship?

  • Do you think this means that our suffering is caused by God? Why/why not? [1]

• How can suffering can make us stronger? Can it also make us weaker?

  • What determines the end result of our suffering?

• Who do you think grows more in faith, and becomes more obedient to God: Christians who are comfortable, or Christians who suffer?

• Do you think suffering well in this way can make an impact on those watching on (especially non-Christians)? Do you have any examples of this?

• Do you have any stories from your own life where you were trained or disciplined by suffering, and it produced "a harvest of righteousness and peace"?

Re-read Hebrew 12:1

• What does it look like in practice to 'throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles'?

  • What habits and practices can we engage in regularly to identify what is hindering or entangling us?

  • What habits and practices can we engage in to 'throw those things off'?

• What does it look like in practice to 'run with perseverance the race marked out for us'?

  • What habits and practices can we engage in to keep on persevering in the race?

  • What habits and practices can we engage in to see the way to go as we run the race?

• Write down a to-do list of practices you want to engage with this week - whether they're things you already do, or new things you want to try (see if you can have a least one new practice on your to-do list). Bring your list with you next time you meet, to share how you went with the group.

[1] N. T. Wright says this about the idea that God causes suffering in order to discipline us:

It is possible, even for Christians, to see it all as meaningless, to fret and fume as though everything had gone wrong. Well, things do go wrong, and we mustn’t make the mistake of blaming God for everything (‘Why did you do this to me?’) as though there were no evil forces out there — and even ‘in here’, within one’s own only partly redeemed human heart — which still have the power to create havoc. But again and again, when we find ourselves thwarted or disappointed, opposed or vilified, or even subject to physical abuse and violence, we may in faith be able to hear the gentle and wise voice of the father, urging us to follow him more closely, to trust him more fully, to love him more deeply. As verse 11 indicates, suffering can be the trowel which digs deeply in the soil of our lives, so that the plant of peaceful righteousness — a life of settled commitment to live as God’s new covenant people — may have its roots deep in the love of God.

N.T. Wright, Hebrews For Everyone, p154.