Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doeth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
Hebrews 12:1
You know the drill…You’ve been dieting for several days and you want to weigh in to see how your struggle has paid off. You know if you haven’t lost at least a pound, you’re gonna go eat at least three chocolate covered doughnuts, a bag of barbecue chips, and raid last night’s steakhouse leftovers – not the salad part. Anyways, those deliciously evil things cried out your name all night!
That scale in your bathroom must provide daily motivation for you to endure any kind of long term diet. So, you wake up every morning, before eating a bite or drinking a single drink, and empty your bladder right away. Then, you remember to take off the earrings that you failed to remove last night…They are heavy. You cut off those long fingernails and toenails. What? They could possibly tip your weight over to the next pound!
Hoping above all hope, you tiptoe back to bed in order to rest … just for five minutes to get the tired weight of last night’s tossing and turning off. Finally, you return to the scale and remove every stitch of clothing. Ugh! You realize you forgot to remove the toenail polish! Very prayerfully, you tiptoe onto the scale. What? How can that be? You’ve basically starved yourself for nearly a week and gained three pounds! How’s that even possible??? That’s it! You storm into the kitchen and I don’t have to tell you what follows.
Go ahead and giggle, but you know I’m right. Weight loss is a minute by minute struggle that requires continuous prayer…but so is life!
As Christians, we should be adamant about laying aside every weight that weighs us down to the point that we are not effective or happy. For dieting, we watch what we put in our mouths. For successful living, we have to watch what we put into our minds that weigh us down such as worry, doubt, and anger.
This past week, I was at the post office hoping to pick up a package from behind the desk. I took my place in line. There happen to be three women in front of me. A fifty-ish blond, curly haired lady paced in front of the desk. She shook her head from side to side, threw her hands up in the air, and complained, “It’s a shame I have to come over here and run down my mail like this!”
Awkward silence filled the room momentarily.
Just then, the sun seemed to, all of a sudden, beam through the tall windows of the lobby. The seventy-ish, short, gray headed lady in front of me smiled from ear to ear and proclaimed, “It sure is a beautiful day isn’t it?” The tall brown headed, thirty-ish lady in front of her rolled her eyes and answered, “Yah, if it will just stay this way now.” The determined elderly lady elderly remarked, “Oh, I’m sure it will! It’s warm outside and Spring is just around the corner!”
Which one of these ladies do you think had laid aside the weight of the world? Do you see how the extra weight of what is going on around us can weigh us down and cause us to act like a person that we do not want to be?
Perhaps, if we got in the habit of giving God any weight that we feel as soon as it begins to bear down on our minds, we would find ourselves on the front lines of this life’s race! What does that look like? Let’s take the angry lady at the post office for an example. How much weight would be lifted off of her shoulders, if she had simply stated her problem to the postmaster, asked God to help him fix the problem, and waited with patience? The mindset is most important when exhibiting faith. We must learn to always think and react, “God, I trust you.”
What weight do you need to hand over to God today while you patiently wait for his answer?
