This week the blog is sponsored by The Good Book Company, which publishes biblical, relevant, and accessible resources like those recommended below.

The Christian life is sometimes pictured as running a race. Hebrews 12:1, for example, exhorts us: “Let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.”

Following Jesus requires discipline, endurance, and perseverance. But so often we’re weighed down by our own wrong thinking. In the power of the Spirit, we’re called to throw off the faulty perspectives that might be holding us back, so that we’re free to run the race with joy. 

Are any of these three weights slowing you down?

The Weight of Mustering Up Our Own Strength

When we look at people who finished well in the Bible, we see men and women of strength and courage. They weren’t perfect, but the things they did often seem far beyond our own experience. This can be discouraging.

So, we strive to be braver, stronger—to push ourselves to be better for Jesus. But we wind up with spiritual muscle strain or discouraged when we inevitably fail


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