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CURRENT RADIO SERIES Dare to Believe   CURRENT TV SERIES Dare to Believe

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, 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.  --Hebrews 12:1 One of the most important phrases in today’s verse is “let us run with endurance.”  Now that’s a constant challenge of the Christian life! Physically speaking, running is one of the healthiest activities that we can do to improve our health. Running is great for the cardiovascular system and helps promote health in a variety of ways. The problem is that many people when they start jogging try to run too hard and end up burning out in just a short period of time. Unfortunately, the same can be true of our spiritual lives. Many of us run hard and fast for Christ, but quickly lose energy and heart and find ourselves out of strength. Why?  Because we haven’t laid aside the things that hold us down.  It’s like trying to run with weights tied to your ankles! The Christian life is a marathon, not a sprint.  And the only way you will be able to run with endurance is to do what the verse today says…to lay aside the sin in your life that weighs you down. Are you struggling today in your walk with Christ?  If so, take an honest look at your life and see if there is any sin that is un-confessed.  If there is, confess it and cast it aside.  When you do you will find you will once again be able to run…and to do so with endurance.    Cast aside any sin that is weighing you down, so you can run with endurance. Living in Forgiveness by Dr. Paul Chappell “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” Isaiah 1:16–18 There are no perfect people. All of us are sinners both by nature and by choice, born apart from God and with no hope of saving ourselves. Yet God’s great love made provision for us to be redeemed. R. A. Torrey said, “I look at the cross of Christ, and I know that atonement has been made for my sins; I look at the open sepulcher and the risen and ascended Lord, and I know the atonement has been accepted. There no longer remains a single sin on me, no matter how many or how great my sins may have been.” The tragedy is that although God cleanses and forgives sin completely at the moment of our salvation, often we remain bound by the weight of past sins. Of course, we can’t use grace and forgiveness as an excuse for continuing in sin. But those sins which have been dealt with—where we have gone to God and confessed and done what was needed to make right with others—only have power over us if we allow them to have that power. We have the promise of God that He does not see them. “For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 8:12). The devil tries to use these offenses of the past to bind us in the present and prevent us from serving God in the future, but we can live in the truth of forgiveness.   Today’s Growth Principle:  All of your sins have been covered in the blood, and you should not live in guilt because of the past.