Hebrews 12:1 “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.”

Do you know who this “great cloud of witnesses” is? Many of them are named in the previous chapter of Hebrews. They are the great heroes of faith. Abel, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Samson, and David are just some of the famous figures from the Bible on the list. Like us, they had to live their lives by faith in God and his promises. They faced threats and dangers for which they could see no solutions. They couldn’t see how the future was going to work out for them, how things could possibly come out all right in the end.

If anything, their challenges were even greater. My brother-in-law jokes about what he calls “first-world problems.” The Wi-Fi stops working at our house and we can’t send an email. We order something on Amazon and they send us the wrong color. We go out to eat and they are out of our favorite item on the menu. How will we ever survive?

It’s not as if we live in the third-world where today’s challenge might be, “Where can I find safe drinking water?” “How can I avoid being killed by the uncontrolled soldiers of my corrupt government?” I haven’t wasted one second worrying about those things my entire life.

The lives of the heroes of faith sounded more like the third-world challenges, even worse. After going on about individual details from their lives, the writer of Hebrews sums it up this way: They “were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. They were stoned; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted, and mistreated…They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.”

The point is not to make us feel better because our problems have not been so bad. Your life may have stories that were every bit as hard to survive as theirs. The point is that the Lord took them all the way through life with their faith intact. It can be done.

And now we are surrounded by this “great cloud of witnesses.” Together with the Bible heroes of faith, you may be able to throw in a few that you have known yourself–Christian family members, parents or grandparents, who bravely fought disease, struggled with poverty, were victims of violence or abuse. A friend of mine tells of sitting in church with his grandmother, who sometimes had blackened eyes because of his violent and unbelieving grandfather. But there she was on Sunday morning, with a heart full of faith, singing Christian hymns at the top of her lungs.

These heroes may not be able to see the details of our lives from heaven. But they are still part of the One Holy Christian Church, and they are pulling for us as brothers and sisters in faith. Their example supports us and inspires us. These are the role models we have always longed for, the positive influences we have always needed. We can do it with God’s help. They did. Now they are behind you. So keep running. Don’t give up in this race.