It's a Marathon, not a Sprint

Part 1

Being born again into God's family is the most wonderful thing that can ever happen to anybody. And it should make us incredibly excited to get to know God personally for the first time, to know our sins are forgiven, to experience the Holy Spirit in our lives. But sooner or later, being a Christian will feel a bit like hard work. The initial thrill will seem to have worn off. And then we might begin to stagnate, or even to regress. Jesus warned us:

Matthew 13v3-9
Then he [Jesus] told them many things in parables, saying: "A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop - a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. He who has ears, let him hear."

Our relationship with God and our effectiveness in his service, our joy and our peace, can wither or be choked, either through our own negligence or by allowing "the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth" (Matthew 13v22) to affect us.

The good news is - this can be fixed! We can rediscover the power and joy of being God's children.

To help us, the writer to the Hebrews wrote Hebrews chapter 11 to remind us what can be achieved through faith. And then he began Hebrews chapter 12 with these words:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

If you can relate to this picture of the Christian life being like running a race, but of being hindered from running as we should, then consider the question, what hinders you? And then throw it away.

It's not just the stuff that we usually think of as being sin that hinders us. It can also a wrong set of priorities - such as too much TV, or too many hobbies - or anything that stops us running the race as we should. And, of course, we do need to throw off all "the sin that so easily entangles".

Years ago, prisoners were fitted with a ball and chain, fastened around their ankle, to prevent them running. Hebrews says that sin and poor time management are like that. The reason why we don't seem to be making progress in our Christian lives is the ball and chain of sin and wrong priorities, dragging us back, so we waste our lives on what is unimportant.

I'm sorry not to have a more palatable answer, but this is the answer. If we want to make progress, and for our Christian lives to be exciting, then we must throw away the ball and chain. And the only way to do that is to repent.

What is hindering you?