We get very excited about the highs and lows of life. The writer of Hebrews has a different perspective: almost no concern for whether things feel good or bad, and very interested in whether we’re moving forward or back. Like hiking over hills and through valleys, it’s not about the altitude, but the direction. It’s worth reading the whole section, but I’ll highlight a few verses.

Check out Hebrews 11:33-38, which puts the ups and downs together in one passage as if there’s no distinction.

Ups:

• …who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. 

Downs:

• There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated— the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

Now look at Hebrews 10:35-39 where forward and back determines being rewarded or destroyed.

Forward:

• So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For, “In just a little while, he who is coming will come and will not delay.”

Back:

• And, “But my righteous one will live by faith. And I take no pleasure in the one who shrinks back.” But we do not belong to those who shrink back and are destroyed, but to those who have faith and are saved.

We’re never to be longing for things to get back to the way they were. We have a much greater hope.

• All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. – Hebrews 11:13-16