It is January, a new year, a clean slate, a fresh start.  Many of us look to the promises of a new year to organize our lives, reinforce good habits, and improve our diets.  With the beginning of a new year, I also like to look inward at my Christian walk for ways I can improve my life spiritually.  This January, I am focusing on spiritual weight loss.  Do I need to be losing weight spiritually?  Over the next few weeks, I am going to post my thoughts about what the Bible has to say about our spiritual weight.  As with any weight loss plan, it is helpful to start with determining an ideal weight.   What weights should we keep or discard?

Losing Weight Spiritually

Part 1:  Determining Your Ideal Spiritual Weight

When my husband and I were first married, we took a trip to San Francisco and stayed in a nice hotel downtown.  As we were at breakfast in the morning, we heard many helicopters hovering right overhead.  Something was happening!  Outside, the Bay to Breakers running race, at the time the largest foot race in the world,  was passing directly in front of the restaurant.  The first racers ran by mentally focused, in great physical condition, pacing themselves for the race ahead.

Then, as the serious racers moved on, we witnessed an astonishing parade of runners in outlandish costumes, wearing advertising signs, promoting causes, and even pulling wheeled floats.  There were superheroes and movie characters, animals and monsters, and even a complete deck of 52 cards running as a pack in the race!  These crazy runners were working very hard, maybe even harder than the lead runners, by carrying signs, wearing costumes, and pulling floats, but they were not going to win the race.  They were too weighed down.

This is the image I had as I considered Hebrews 12:1  Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us….

Just as in the Bay to Breakers race, we can, in our spiritual race, carry along with us extra “weights” that bog us down as we pursue the finish line.   What, then, are these weights?

Sin is obviously an unhelpful drag on the life of a Christian who is straining for the goal.  Sin is such a hindrance that it is mentioned separately in this verse.  If we are looking to be in our best spiritual shape, we must examine our lives for sin to be removed.  We must especially look for those sins that “cling so closely” to us… those that we are used to… those that we may even have become blind to.

In addition to sins, there are also “weights”, according to this verse, that we need to lay aside.  While the writer to Hebrews doesn’t specify exactly what are these weights, I have listed several things here from other scriptures that could be considered weights in our race.

1. Legalism — Considering that the original audience for the letter to the Hebrews would have been those coming to Christ from the Jewish faith, the author here could very well have been referring to the endless laws and rituals that the Jewish people practiced, but which didn’t result in holiness as “weights”.
   1. Colossians 2:8 — “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.”
2. Cares and worries — God wants us to trust Him for all things in our daily lives.  When we stress about things that we are facing, we are essentially denying that we have a sovereign God who rules over all.  The added weight of worry is one that slows us down in our race for the finish. The One who can guarantee our eternity can surely be in charge of our temporal.
   1. I Peter 5:7 — “casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.”
   2. Philippians 4:6 — “do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
3.  Fears — There are hundreds of verses in the Bible that say “Do not fear!”  or “Fear not!”  We can fear many things in life, the opinions of others, circumstances, the future, loss, even death.  All of these things are controlled by God.  Fear holds hands with worry to keep us  from running powerfully ahead in our spiritual lives.
   1. I John 4:18 –“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”
   2. II Timothy 1:7 — “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”
4. Burdens and bad habits from our past life — All Christians come to Christ from a past life of sin.  During our time here on earth, we are new in Christ, but we are being renewed in Christ each day.  At the start of the new year is a good time to take a close look at your life and see if there are old things from the past self that are heavy burdens.  Jesus wants to give us rest from these burdens and to take that weight from us.
   1. Matthew 11: 28-30–“ Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
5. Grudges— Christians are those who have been forgiven.  Thus, we are those who should be forgiving.  In fact, a forgiving lifestyle is so important for a believer that Jesus mentions it in His model prayer, The Lord’s Prayer.  In the 5 short verses of Matthew 6:9-13, one of them is given to instructing us to forgive others, just as we have been forgiven.  The grudge weight dragging on our spirit is eliminated through forgiveness.
6. Good things in life that distract us from our goal— Some of the hardest teachings of Christ are the ones in which he instructs his followers to give up something that is good, to follow Him.  He wants to be the focus of our lives.  Other things like money, family, hobbies, entertainment, jobs, etc that are good things overall, become weights to the runner who would pursue those things first.
   1. Matthew 10:37-39–“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.  And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”
   2. Matthew 6:24–“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

Can we cast off too many things in our race?  As I was writing this post, and I searched for the Bay to Breakers (a race that I haven’t really followed in the decades since I was there) I found that the craziness that we witnessed in 1987 escalated over time into nudity and obscenity, which caused the race promoters to implement rules against nudity in the race.   Some people rid themselves of EVERY weight to run the race.  Yet, this is also not the proper way to run for the prize.   True racers are properly equipped to enhance their speed.

So, I would also like to point out that in our Christian race there are things that we need to keep.  Just like a serious runner wears good shoes and appropriate clothing for the weather conditions of the race, we also are to instructed to wear certain things in our race.

1. The full armor of God— we are running a race that requires endurance, yet we are also in a battle.  We must not neglect our protection!
   1. Ephesians 6:13–“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.”                  The Full Armor of God
2. Our new self— In Packing for Eternity, I wrote about the “new self things” from Colossians 3 that we are supposed to put on to help us in our run through this life.  Each of these characteristics helpfully equip us to run our course.
   1. Colossians 3:12-17 — “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,  bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.  And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.   And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.  Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.  And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”

Will you take a few moments with me at the start of a new year and examine your spiritual life for any excess weight that may be keeping back as you run the race?

With Joy,

Kathleen

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