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Lose weight and run the race!
LELAND ACKER
One sport I never got into in school was track. I just didn't

get it. I understood the rules, I just couldn't figure out how it was supposed to be fun.

In football and basketball, we had to run laps. Sometimes, we had to run as a punishment (such as when we blew the snap count during practice.) Other times, it was for "conditioning."

Track was different. In track, the point was to run laps. How do you practice a sport that consists of running laps? You guessed it. You run laps.

In high school, I weighed 210 pounds. It should come as no surprise that I did not enjoy running laps. However, to join the track team (even to hurl a discus), I had to run laps. So, when springtime came, I was not in sports. Today, I weigh 275. I think we can all agree that it would be foolish of me to try to run one of Dr. Mark Morris' ultramarathons at this weight.

However, that is just what everyone around me seems to be doing with their spiritual lives, myself included.

Hebrews 12:1 says "Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us."

We're discussing running the race of life from Hebrews 12:1-2.

The Bible says to "lay aside every weight."

The weights are the things that hold you down in life, the things that keep you from living the life that God wants you to live. These weights come in different shapes and sizes. Some weights are bad memories from our younger days. Some people had horrible childhoods from which they have yet to recover.

Other weights come in the form of good memories of those "glory days." Some people are still reliving that state championship game of their high school football career. Others are still reliving the popularity they had in high school.

Memories are wonderful, but should not stop us from moving forward in the life that God wants us to live. It is wrong not to live in the "here and now."

Paul wrote (under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit) in Philippians 3:13-14, "Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

Paul was pressing toward the mark of the high calling of Christ, which involved getting to know Christ better (Philippians 3:10). That's what God wants us to do. He wants us to set aside those memories in which we live. He wants us to quit coasting on prior achievements and resigning on past failures, and move boldly forward and run the race that is set before us.

What does that race entail? Getting to know Jesus better, growing closer together and living the life God wants us to live. (If you grow closer to God, you'll do what He wants you to do.)

Can I prove this in Hebrews 12:2? Yep. Verse 2 says, "Looking to Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith." That's what it's all about.

Live life. Your best days are still to come. chreporter@mediactr.com