Hey y'all, you're listening to the Join the podcast with your host, Emma Daughter.

To learn more about today's reading or to read along with us, check out jointhejourney.com.

Thanks for joining. What does the author mean when he writes that we could fall away from the

living God? Can we fall away from God or lose our salvation? What does verse 13 mean? Growing up, I went to public school

and every year we had to do this thing called the fitness gram. And part of this fitness

assessment that you'd take, whether you're in elementary school or a senior in high school,

it was something called the pacer test. And the pacer test was a series of beeps or musical

interludes where you'd have to line up on one side of the gym and sprint across to the other side before you heard the next beep.

And at first, it was super easy.

You were supposed to walk, pace yourself.

That was the idea.

But as kids, we thought the early stages of this test was pretty funny because it was just such a long amount of time that they

gave you to get from one side to the other. And so we would make fun at the test, essentially,

sprint all the way across, pretend to check our watches, act like it was this easy test. It was all a joke.

But eventually, the beeps got faster and it would get harder and harder to make it all the way across.

And this, what we thought was a strong start at the beginning actually wasn't because when the test actually became a test, it was challenging, it was pushing us.

We couldn't make it all the way across.

This strong start, or what we thought was a strong start, was likely followed by a poor finish. And that's what the writer

of Hebrews is getting it. You can have end your faith journey a super strong start, but it could

be followed by a really poor finish. So think about it. We read Bible reading plans all the time

and don't finish. We give up, we get behind, we fall off. We say

we'll hold somebody accountable and forget to check in. Or we make a commitment to limit our

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