So, once we admit that Jesus is in fact the Messiah, the One Who fulfills all the Old Testament sacrifices and prophecies, and once we determine to trust Him completely, allowing Him to bless us in His way and in His time, how do we express that faith in Him and submission to Him in our daily lives?

In the first place, by accepting His discipline. For our author insists that, just as good earthly parents impose unpleasant discipline on us in order to help us grow up (12:9), so God allows us even the greatest of suffering to come into our lives precisely in order to help us share in the holiness and righteousness of Christ (12:10-11).

And as we suffer for the sake of Christ, that will inevitably change the way we interact with one another. For just as Jesus endured the pain and the shame of the cross for our salvation (12:2), so as we also put our own desires to death in order to meet the needs of others, our conflicts with them will be diminished. As we follow Jesus’ example of self-denying, self-sacrificial love we will truly have peace with one another (12:14).

But we can also have such peace within ourselves. For as we abandon our self-centered expectations of comfort and convenience and security, as we embrace God’s will for us regardless of how painful or confusing it might be, we’ll have no room for disappointment or the bitterness it produces (12:15).

So, let’s put aside our insistence that everything make sense to us and feel right to us all the time. Instead, let’s trust the love of the Christ Who died for us. Let’s trust the power of the Christ Who is seated at the right hand of the Father, possessing all authority in Heaven and on earth. And even if He calls us to suffer for His sake, let’s follow Him, trusting that He knows what is truly best for us, no matter how much it might hurt.

Hebrews 12:1-17 (NASB)

Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,
2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
3 For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart.
4 You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin;
5 and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, Nor faint when you are reproved by Him;
6 For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives.”
7 It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?
8 But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons.
9 Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them; shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live?
10 For they disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness.
11 All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful; yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
12 Therefore, strengthen the hands that are weak and the knees that are feeble,
13 and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed.
14 Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.
15 See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled;
16 that there be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal.
17 For you know that even afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears.