Pastor’s Corner: “Does it Help me Run?”
Hebrews 12:1 (AMPC) – Therefore then, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us,
This is the point of the whole book of Hebrews: Endure, persevere, run, fight, be alert, be strengthened, don’t drift, don’t neglect, don’t be sluggish, don’t take your eternal security for granted. Fight the fight of faith on the basis of Christ’s spectacular death and resurrection. And show your faith the way the saints of Hebrews 11 (heroes of faith) did, by not coasting through life.
Let me say it again but more simply…..RUN! Everything else supports this — explains it or gives motivation for it. Run the race set before you! Don’t stroll, don’t meander, don’t wander about aimlessly. Run as in a race with a finish line and with everything hanging on it.
Some of you may say pastor; I don’t like to run…it is not my thing. You do know the author of Hebrews is not talking about physically running. The author is calling us to spiritually endure – Galatians 6:9 (NLT) – 9 So let’s not get tired of doing what is good. At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing if we don’t give up. Still, some us don’t like to run, physically or spiritually.
The book of Hebrews was written to a church that was getting old and was settling into the world and losing its wartime mentality and starting to drift through life without focus, without vigilance, and without energy. Their hands were growing weak, their knees were feeble. It was just easier to meander in the crowd of life than to run the marathon. Into the church has crept the disease of drifting and neglecting. People are growing careless, spiritually lazy, and negligent.
The Author reminds us: Therefore then, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses….. The Motivation to RUN: The Witness are watching! The witnesses are the saints who have run the race before us, and have gathered, as it were, along the marathon route to say, through the testimony of their lives, “By faith I finished, you can too!” You can lay the weights down and the sins. By faith, by the promises of better things hoped for, you can do it. I did it. And I know it can be done. Run. Run!”
Verse 1 says, “lay aside every encumbrance, and sin which so easily entangles us.” – not only entangling sins, but “every encumbrance,” that is, every weight or obstacle — things that in themselves may not be sins. This shows us that the fight of faith — the race of the Christian life — is not fought well or run well by only asking, “what’s wrong with this or that?” But by asking, “Is it in the way of greater faith and greater love and greater purity and greater courage and greater humility and greater patience and greater self-control?” Not, “Is it a sin?” but, “Does it help me run? Is it in the way?” Don’t ask about your music, your movies, your parties, your habits: What’s wrong with it? Ask: Does it help me run the race? Does it help me run for Jesus?
Hebrews 12:1 is a command to look at your life, think hard about what you are doing, and get ruthless about what stays and what goes.
In His Grace,
Pastor Hamilton