Inspiration from Hebrews 12:1-2

 

Hebrews 12:1-2 Read it yourself

You are surrounded by witnesses. Witnesses throughout the ages. From Abel on there have been people on the earth with faith in God. People who received promises and grace and God's favor and believed in God even though they had nothing tangible or memorable to hold on to or to look back at. Yet they were people of God. They suffered for what they believed so much more than you have ever suffered. More so in the sense that they didn't have a historical event that you have, being born after the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This cloud of witnesses will not be complete until you finish the race and join their ranks as a full-fledged member of the witnesses of God's grace. The witnesses are just like you. They had only enough faith for the next step, the next moment, the next day. You are sometimes of the opinion that others in history are somehow more spiritual, more in tune, more 'something' that you. The walk of faith is the walk of faith, you have what you have - Walk in it.

Lay aside the weight, lay aside the sin. Sin is a burden, it is something that drags you down. It pulls you away from your hearts desire. Like tentacles of some creature from a horror flick, it wraps around your heart and soul and slowly inexorably tugs, pulls, and draws you from your destiny towards the edge of an abyss with the horror of darkness and evil surrounding you and threatening to immerse you in despair and disillusionment. It is a never ending battle to fight against sin. The word 'sin' means missing the mark. A diversion of a few imperceptible fractions of a degree will cause a marksman to miss his target completely. Sin is like that, it is a distraction that easily besets you. It weighs you down and sucks the life and joy out of your existence. Leaving it aside is a daily thing. You don't wake up one day and cease to sin. You rather wake up every day determining to not sin and then a few short minutes later find yourself sinning again. The beautiful thing about God's grace is that it is always a straight line back to God from wherever you happen to fall. If your sin has led you down a twisted, tangled canyon and into a deep ticket of alders you don't have to re-trace your steps. In other words, there is no purgatory, there is no penance, there is only repentance and obedience. From that point the path always opens up into a clear open, perhaps perilous and scary, but always straight and narrow path back into the arms of God.

Run the race. Life is a race, the older you get the faster the pace seems. It is a thru-hike type of race, you are not returning to the starting point, you are heading for a destination. It is deliberate, it is not wandering. Life is not a random wandering from point to point, or at least it need not be. There are many who are in that situation. Another word that describes them is 'lost'. They don't live with focus, discipline, and attention to the trail. They wander aimlessly, falling into one mishap after another. Some want nothing to do with the race and want to live as an anonymous unknown wraith, a mist that drifts without soul or substance. Others who are currently lost desperately want to be found. They want to find the path, they want more substance and meaning to their existence. They may not know it yet, but they want God, they need Jesus. Your race is a race towards Jesus. That is where you look that is who you follow. The inspiration for life itself, the author, the perfecter, the one who relentlessly pursued joy regardless of the cost and now sits in the presence of God working on your complete and thorough reconciliation and restoration into the person you were always destined to be.