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Cleaning Out The Junk

"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."  Hebrews 12:1

I have been on a roll of "unsubscribing" from the plethora of emails that I receive on a daily basis.  All of the stores, hotels, restaurants, and various online sites that have ever been privy to my email address have been bombarding my inbox!  Most messages come from online retailers that I have done business with at some point in time in the past, and they must have misinterpreted my purchase from them as an open invitation to send me emails every day of the week!  I honestly felt like I was casting off invisible chains with each email feed I would "unsubscribe" to! 

Just as I have to make a concerted effort to keep the junk in my inbox at bay, there have been other forms of junk that I have recognized in my life through the years. I stopped to think about the various things in my life that I have had to "unsubscribe" to in the past, as well as the things that I have to continually keep in check:
  • Judgmental spirit
  • Being critical
  • Negativity
  • Relationships that bring me down
  • Gossip
I wish I could tell you that ridding myself of this junk was as easy as clicking on an "unsubscribe" button.  However, most of those things only began to change as my relationship with Christ changed.  As the Holy Spirit would reveal an attitude or action that that had me ensnared, I would begin to realize how those things were a burden to my Christian walk.

The writer of Hebrews compares our relationship with Christ to a race.  If we were actually running in a race, we wouldn't want to be burdened down with any excess weight whatsoever.  Excess weight is a hindrance to a runner, just as sin is a hindrance to someone running in the Christian race. 

You're junk is probably going to be different than my junk, and trust me, I've got a lot of junk!  My heaviest piece of junk to cast off was my judgmental and critical spirit.  My attitude and thoughts truly did not reflect a heart like Christ's.  I had to commit my attitude and thoughts to God daily in prayer.  I prayed that He wouldn't just take out the bad, but that He would replace it with something good.

So we're told to throw off whatever is hindering us, but we can't throw it off unless we first identify what it is.  So . . . . what kind of junk have you been lugging around as you run?  God doesn't just want you to run in the race, He wants you to run well and perservere to the end.  Ask Him to show you what needs to be thrown off so that you can run the race He has prepared for you.

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