Life on Fireনমুনা

Olympic athletes know that every millisecond counts in the race. So they ensure that they do not carry anything that could cause them to lose any precious time. This can include shaving off the finest bits of body hair to ensure they are as streamlined as they could possibly be.

Our faith journey is also described as a race. A race that is watched by a great cloud of witnesses. The author of Hebrews warns us that sin can be a great hindrance to successfully running this race, but they also encourage us to 'lay aside every weight' too. Could it be that weights are different from sin?

At times there are things in our lives that, though not a sin, are a weight. They slow us down in our pursuit of God and become blockages to true intimacy with God and effectiveness for God.

Yesterday, we briefly looked at the Jezebel spirit; one of the ways this spirit is infiltrating culture with its immoral and perverse ideologies is through entertainment (music, media, etc). Giving time to these ideologies through entertainment may not be an outright sin, but it is a weight that will slow us down in the long run.

Unfortunately, in modern-day Christianity, we are quick to call the practice of self-control legalism, spiritual disciplines religious and consecrated living striving. Whilst it is true that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone, and that God's love for us is not dependent on us; how we 'run this race' is. In other words, how we live matters, what we tolerate matters, and how consecrated you are unto Him matters.

Consecration means 'to declare something sacred', consecrated living is to give ourselves fully to God by living set-apart lives. Set apart from sin and untangled from weights that could trip us up. If we want to be people who are effective in changing the world for His glory we cannot live lifestyles that are not different from the world. We will be unable to bring true freedom to those in bondage if we ourselves operate in the very bondage we seek to free others from.

But the focus of consecration is not 'separation from' but 'separation unto' the Lord. So as you go away and speak to the Holy Spirit about what 'weights' you need to shed in your life, let your question not be 'What do I need to get rid of?' but 'What would allow me closer intimacy with a holy God?'