04.03.14 

For consider Him who endured such hostility from sinners against Himself, lest you become weary and discouraged in your souls. – Hebrews 12:3 NKJV. 

You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. – Isaiah 26:3. 

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” – Matthew 11:28-30. 

A man in Lawton, Oklahoma, dropped a $20.00 bill, which fell into a storm drain. It was the only money the man had so he climbed down into the storm drain to find the twenty dollar bill. The storm drain pipe has a diameter of only 42 inches which forced the man to crawl along through the pipe. City workers say that there is a vast network of underground pipe and that they have to use maps to keep from becoming lost. This is what happened to the man who was trying to find his money; he lost his way in the network of pipes. Two days later, a group of students heard the man yelling for help. Police officers said the man was about 15 feet below street level. He had a bump on his head, was dehydrated, disoriented, and weary; not sure of the time or the date. And…he never found his twenty dollar bill. (KWSO-TV 03.08.14) 

Can you imagine crawling in a pipe for hours and hours in the dark? Then, you have no idea how to crawl back out and so you begin to call out in the dark for someone, anyone to help you. You bump your head, you become weaker as you go without food and water having no idea as to where you are…Sounds like the setting for a Stephen King novel. 

The Lawton man’s ordeal in a way is a picture of what happens when we have the wrong focus in life. His focus was the twenty dollar bill, money. Now if we were down to our last twenty dollars we would probably be crawling down into that storm drain too. In life, as we focus in on making money, or gaining fame, or power, or other worldly goals it can become a maze leading to nowhere. We try this, we do that, we go there, we turn left, we turn right, and become so unhinged that we don’t know which way is up, and which way is down. We cry out for help and wonder if there is anyone there. 

If you have grown weary of crawling through the maze of the world’s goals seeking what the world says you ought to seek, there is a solution. There is someone listening. The solution is actually very simple, you need to have the right focus. That is what the Bible is saying in Hebrews 12:3 when it says to “Consider Him.” The Him, is Jesus. Change your focus in life to Jesus and then you will not “grow weary and discouraged.”  

The world has a way of driving us crazy, making us weary, making us angry, of giving us the opposite of what God can give us. If we put our trust, our focus on God, “stay” our minds on Him, we will find “perfect peace,” which the goals of this world can never give us. Jesus tells us what we need to do, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”