Dead weight

Picture this.  You enlist to run a marathon in Dallas, Texas in July.  Needless to say, it's HOT.  You, for some reason unknown to all, show up wearing multiple winter coats, all layered.  You're sweating before you even begin.  The judges look at you strangely, but say nothing, as there is no rule against wearing coats in marathons.  It just seems rather unwise to them. 

The gun fires and you begin your race, but in moments you're so overheated and worn out from the coats that you've stopped off in the shade.  You're too tired to go backward, too burdened to go forward at more than a snail's pace.  You just sit in the shade thinking of different methods of removing the coats, all the while sweating to death and saddened as you see others running by you...the ones who seem to be successfully completing the race. 

It's a silly analogy, I'll admit, but one that I feel often personifies my life.  Hebrews 12:1 talks about throwing off those things which weigh us down, along with the sin that entangles us.  How many times do I hold on to something entirely unbeneficial, actually harmful, and just say, "well, it's not against the rules," or "it's not actually sin"?  How often do I feel like the person in that race.  Too worn out to move forward or backward. 

How often do I feel saddened by those completing the race ahead of me, or worse yet, feel unable to help people stumbling under their own weight- because I have yet to throw off my own? 

How do I get rid of all of those coats?  Verse two... By fixing my eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of my faith.  Lord, let me know Christ better so that instead of thinking of clever ways to remove my own baggage, I can just watch Christ slip it off of me.  Let me run the race with great endurance. 

Hudson Taylor, it a letter to his sister, "How could I preach with sincerity that, to those who would receive Jesus, 'to them gave he power to become the sons of God' (ie Godlike) when it was not so in my own experience?  Instead of growing stronger, I seemed to be getting weaker and to have less power against sin; and no wonder, for faith and even hope were getting low.  I hated myself, I hated my sin, yet gained no strength against it.  I felt I was a child of God.  His Spirit in my heart would cry, in spite of all, "Abba, Father."  But to rise to my privileges as a child, I was utterly powerless.  ... All the time I felt assured that there was in Christ all I needed, but the practical question was-- how to get it out.  He was rich truly, but I was poor; He was strong, but I was weak.  I knew full well that there was in the root, the stem, abundant fatness, but how to get it into my puny little branch was the question.  As gradually as the light dawned, I saw that faith was the only requisite-- was the hand to lay hold on His fulness and make it mine.  But I had not this faith. ... What was I to do."

It's encouraging to know the 'greats' of Christianity struggled too.