Hebrews 6

₁Our faith must grow. We must not stop at the first things that we have learned about Christ. No, our faith must become like the faith of adults and we must not talk only about the things that were important when we started to believe, which were the foundation of our faith. We must not try to build the foundation of our faith again. You are trying to build the foundation again when you keep on talking about things like these:

₃Stop talking about those things. We must go on and become adults in our faith. We will do this if God helps us. _4-6Because if people have turned away from God, we can not help them turn back to Him again. Because God has shone his light on them and they have seen the good things that God gives. God gave the Holy_Spirit to those people. They felt how good the message of God is and how strong God is, because He rules now and will rule forever. If these people have turned away from God, we can not turn them back to God again, because they have crucified the Son of God again. They have become guilty again and they have made other people laugh at the name of the Lord.

₇If there is a lot of rain on a field and the water goes deep into the ground, the plants grow and the people who work the field can use it. This is how God blesses a field. ₈But if thorns and weeds grow on that field, it becomes worthless and God will curse that field. In the end the farmer will burn that field and destroy everything on it.

₉My friends, what we have said is true, but we are very sure that your faith is still strong and that God will save you. ₁₀Because God is always fair, He will not forget the good things that you have done and He will not forget how much you have loved Him and how you have helped the believers and cared for them, and that you still do. ₁₁But we want each one of you always to try hard to keep on to the end, to show that you are very sure of the things that you know will happen, the things that you hope God will do. ₁₂Do this, and do not be lazy in your faith when you are serving God. Do what the people do who have received the blessings that God promised. They got the blessings because they believed in God and waited patiently.

₁₃There is no one who is more important than God. When He made a promise to Abraham, God did not ask someone to be his witness. God was his own Witness when He made a promise to Abraham, ₁₄and God said: ‘As sure as I live, I will bless you a lot and I will give you many descendants.’

₁₅Abraham waited patiently for the things that God had promised him and later those things that God had promised happened to him.

₁₆When people promise something, they always say someone is their witness and the witness is more important than themselves. And because the important person says it is true, no one will argue about it. ₁₇God wanted to show that the things that He wants to do can not change. He wanted to show this to the people who will inherit everything that He has promised. So God was his own Witness to show that the things He had promised would happen for sure. ₁₈God promised that He would do things and He was his own Witness. These 2 things can not change because God can not lie. We have run to God to save us and He will encourage us to hope that He will do everything that He has said. ₁₉We hope and wait for the things that will happen, so our lives are safe and we believe and know it. This hope is like an anchor which holds a boat so that it can not float away. We hope and we are sure that Jesus is our Anchor. Our hope goes in behind the curtain of the temple. ₂₀Jesus is our Leader and He has gone in there before us to help us. He does it because He has become the High-priest forever, like Melchizedek.