Faith to Faithfulness Part 2 // Hebrews 12:4-17

March 30, 2025

1. Do you have any memorable experiences being disciplined or instructed by your parents? Was it a positive or negative experience? If you have kids, how has raising your own kids changed your view of your parents?

2. Verse 7 calls us to endure hardship as discipline. Is discipline always punishment or rebuke? What other hardships and struggles are Christians called to?

3. Why can we trust that when God disciplines us, it is not random or meaningless?

4. We submit to training, sacrifice and discipline on our sports teams, in our hobbies or in our workplaces. Why do we often resist submitting to God’s discipline?

5. Why would the writer of Hebrews offer up Esau as a warning to us?  How would you describe Esau’s worldview or what he valued?

6. If you look over the “Faith Hall of Fame” in Hebrews Chapter 11, how were some of these people disciplined by God? What was the result? How does Hebrews Chapter 11 and 12 change your thinking about trials and tribulations?

7. Deuteronomy 29:16-20 and Hebrews 12:15 warn against becoming bitter. How can we become bitter? What does bitterness show? Why is it dangerous?

8.  What blessings and riches has God given us to help us endure and persevere in our hardships? Why is it important that we grow in faith and become mature Christians?

9. Hebrews 12:2 calls us to fix our eyes on Jesus. Recall the first verse of the hymn Turn Your Eyes:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus
Look full in His wonderful face
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace

When we look upon Jesus and picture His life, His work, His Cross and His resurrection, how does this change our view of our life, our hardships and the world around us?