Persevere

The book of Hebrews is an invitation to the Christian steward to persevere until the day that will bring the culmination of God's redemptive story. It will be a day when God's people can cease working, struggling and sacrificing, and instead rest in God's holy presence. But for now, the steward's calling is to keep on keeping on in obedience to the Word - the obedience of faith in the One who has led them out of slavery to sin. It means persevering, even though the work is hard and the way is sometimes shrouded in mist. It requires effort, as Hebrews 4:11 tells us. Expository preacher and Bible commentator Albert Barnes (1798-1870) comments:

Let us labor therefore. Let us earnestly strive. Since there is a rest whose attainment is worth all our efforts; since so many have failed of reaching it by their unbelief; and since there is so much danger that we may fail of it also, let us give all diligence that we may enter into it. Heaven is never obtained but by diligence, and no one enters there who does not earnestly desire it, and who does not make a sincere effort to reach it. The word unbelief best expresses the sense, as the apostle was showing that this was the principal thing that prevented men from entering into heaven.

Author Eugene H. Peterson writes that the reason we can persevere is because God sticks with us.

God sticks to his relationship. He establishes a personal relationship with us and stays with it. The central reality for Christians is the personal, unalterable, persevering commitment God makes to us. Perseverance is not the result of our determination; it is the result of God's faithfulness. We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous, because God sticks with us. Christian discipleship is a process of paying more and more attention to God's righteousness and less and less attention to our own; finding the meaning in our lives not by probing our moods and motives and morals, but by believing in God's will and purposes; making a map of the faithfulness of God, not charting the rise and fall of our enthusiasms. It is out of such a reality that we acquire perseverance.

This is what the writer of the New Testament letter to the Hebrew Christians did. He sang a litany of people who lived by faith, that is, people who centered their lives on the righteous God who stuck by them through thick and thin so that they were able to persevere. They lived with uncommon steadiness of purpose and with a most admirable integrity. None of them lived without sin. They all made their share of mistakes and engaged in episodes of disobedience and rebellion. But God stuck with them so consistently and surely that they learned how to stick with God.

Taken from my Daily Devotional about stewardship

Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed. Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said,
"So I declared on oath in my anger,
'They shall never enter my rest.'"
And yet his works have been finished since the creation of the world. For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: "On the seventh day God rested from all his works." And again in the passage above he says, "They shall never enter my rest." Therefore since it still remains for some to enter that rest, and since those who formerly had the good news proclaimed to them did not go in because of their disobedience, God again set a certain day, calling it "Today." This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted:
"Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts." For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience. (Hebrews 4:1-11 NIV)