Ankle Weights

Have you ever tried to run with ankle weights on? You know what I’m talking about, right? Little weights that you strap to your ankle just above your shoe, that are designed to build your leg muscles. They are supposed to tone up the muscles in your leg (especially the ones right around the knee.) 

  Anyway, I don’t like to run simply for the sake of running. Give me a ball and some people who want to play some kind of game and I’ll still run all day. But to run just for the sake of running is absolutely NO FUN for this guy. So, when I see someone running, just for the sake of it, I consider then committed and more disciplined than I. However, when I see someone running with ankle weights on, I don’t think they’re committed… I think they SHOULD BE committed…to a crazy person home… because running is hard enough without all that extra weight!

Seriously, it should be a sin to run with extra weight on your legs!

So, this morning I was reading “The Word for You Today” Daily Devotional. It had a great little write up called “Running the Race”. It said that in Greece, there’s a place tourists seldom visit.  The writer of Hebrews may have had in mind when he wrote, “lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and… run with endurance.”  It’s where the Isthmian games, a forerunner to the Olympics, were held: a place where athletes were hailed as heroes. 

To develop muscle they trained with weights strapped to their legs, but on the day of the race they stripped off anything that wasn’t essential. There’s a lesson here.  We think what we're clinging to is important. If we didn’t, letting go wouldn’t be a struggle; we’d simply set it down.  

The Christian life is a race that starts the day you accepted Christ and ends when you meet him face to face.  In order to cross the finish line as a winner you must eliminate:

1.  Anything that slows you down. In other words, set down anything that hinders your spiritual progress. In and of itself it may not be wrong, but it becomes a weight when it stops you from living for God to the fullest.

2.  Anything that causes you to stumble short of the finish line.  You must constantly monitor the level of your commitment to Christ, the growth of your faith, your home life, your relationships, your integrity, your work ethic, your thought life and your habits.  Make up your mind to stay focused on the prize.  Great athletes who won received a garland that eventually withered, but you will “receive the crown of Glory that will never fade” (1 Peter 5:4 NIV).  Isn’t that worth running the race for?

I would say that it is! And I’m also glad to know that the writer of Hebrews in on my side about the whole ankle weight thing… 

What weight is hindering you? Post a comment below and I’ll be praying for you!