Hold Fast Without Wavering

"I still say the words. I just stopped expecting anything to happen when I say them."

Take the verse apart in order, because it is built like an instruction with its reason tucked into a bracket at the end. Let us hold fast. The verb is a grip, the word for holding down something that would otherwise get away. The profession of our faith is a public thing, homologia, literally the same-saying: what you have already said in front of witnesses. And without wavering is one word meaning unbending, not leaning.

The parenthesis is where the whole weight actually rests: for he is faithful that promised. The writer does not tell you to grip harder, and he never says your grip is what makes the promise good. He moves the load off you almost in passing.

Watch what he does in the very next sentence, because it is the practical half that usually gets cut off. Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and to good works: not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together. His remedy for a thinning faith is not a better private discipline. It is other people, close enough to provoke you.

So do the same-saying to somebody today. Not a debate, one sentence, to the friend who has watched you drift or whoever in your house would notice. Convictions kept private thin out. Spoken ones have witnesses.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 181 is The Book Of Records (Esther 6:1).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna