Hebrews 12:2 “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God.”

People look in many different directions to find the secret to a successful life. Some fix their attention on making money. Everything in their education, in their career choice, and in even in their personal relationships is driven by making as much cash as they can.

But you can’t buy God’s love through life. There are no “for sale” signs in front of the mansions in heaven. King Solomon’s proverbs are still true: “Better a little with the fear of the Lord than great wealth with turmoil. Better a meal of vegetables where there is love than a fattened calf with hatred.”

Some people try to make their lives meaningful by turning to a life of activism. They take up every cause to try to save the planet, but they end up a champion of every cause except God’s own. I don’t want to discourage you from a life which shows a proper concern for God’s creation and the people who populate it, but finding God’s kind of success demands that your attention be focused someplace else.

Fix your eyes on Jesus. Remember that he is ahead of you. If you want to stay in God’s race, if you want to stay in the Christian faith, doesn’t it make sense to keep your eyes on faith’s author? Our faith has a source. It’s not something our bodies naturally produce, like the pigment in our skin or the wax in our ears. Faith looks to Jesus for its life. Not only did he author and create our faith. He is the one who perfects it. He is the one who makes our faith complete, and intense, and enduring, so that it can keep us close to Jesus through this life and on to the next.

Fix your eyes on Jesus, who endured the cross and scorned its shame. Do you think that your life is sometimes hard? Consider the race Jesus had to run. Our God was not like some cold, detached scientist in a laboratory, concocting a plan of salvation which would never involve him in any way, and then feeding it to his rats down on earth. Our salvation cost him everything! Jesus not only became one of us and joined us in our world, he made our sins his very own. He endured the agony of the cross for the joy of returning to heaven, not to live their alone, but with each of us as his eternal companions.

Need some encouragement to stay in God’s race? Need to be sure someone cares for you all along the way? Need to be sure it is really worth it? Then remember who’s ahead of you. Fix your eyes on Jesus. He endured the cross just to make you his. You can be certain he has made heaven yours.