Welcome to Nancy Guthrie’s guided journal “Hoping for Something Better,” which she based on her book of the same title (Tyndale 2007).
New journal entries will appear in your profile Monday-Saturday for 6 weeks. If you missed any so far, stay subscribed to this feed and you can begin when it starts over. Be sure to start your own journal within your Beliefnet profile or in a notebook to respond to Nancy’s prompts.
Day 10
There is something better than allowing your heart to harden toward God in unbelief. It is staying soft before God and listening for his voice.
Read Hebrews 3:1-19.
Do you find yourself feeling like a hypocrite at times—going through all the motions of religion and yet finding that there is a void, a sense of deadness toward God, distance from God? Have you settled for something less than a genuine love relationship with Jesus? Do you want something better—a relationship that is real, a faith that is relevant?
Perhaps you need to have your heart examined—perhaps you’ve allowed your heart to become hard toward God. That’s what happened to the children of Israel as they wondered in the desert. For them, hardness of heart meant they could never enter into the rest God provided for them.
Based on the instruction in 3:1, in what practical ways can you “fix your thoughts on,” “consider,” or “think carefully about” Jesus?
Read Hebrews 3:7-14, along with Exodus 17:1-7 and Numbers 20:1-13, which describe the two events referred to in Psalm 95 quoted in Hebrews 3. What did the people in the wilderness do wrong? What was the result for them?
What is the warning in this passage? Who is it for? What are the results of not heeding this warning?
–Nancy Guthrie