The Race for Eternal Life.

The weight of the world, we've all felt it haven't we? Of course, figuratively speaking we've felt that weight pressing down on us threatening to destroy us. It's those days when everything seems to go wrong. One problem after another arises and the flood of mental, emotional pressure, as well as physical ailments just want to crush us until there is nothing left of us. We somehow make it through- though there are times we end up broken from it all and need a lot of time to heal. Some of our world-weight, crushing injuries are able to be hidden, other times we can't help but wear the fresh wounds for all to see. The term mental breakdown holds a stigma - less so now than years ago- but still, it's a term we use to label those we classify as too mentally, emotionally weak to handle the weight of the world pressing down on them.

Are people who have mental breakdowns weak simply because another person in a similar situation is able to handle it without succumbing to a mind freezing, world altering, numb, strangeness that slips us out of the normal world into an unfamiliar and very scary strange realm of mental existence? Weakness truly has no place in mental, emotional breakdowns- they are the result of sensitivities unique to us all as individuals. You may have a sensitivity to eating mushrooms and they make you break out in hives, are you weak because of that? No. You may not be able to take the same medicine that thousands of others are able to take without bad side effects, does that make you weak? No, it's just who you are. Your heart may have damage to it done from genetics along with various abuses - diet, smoking, lack of exercise does that make you a weak person? No. You may have been born with the inability to regulate your insulin, does that mean you are weak? No. All these things that happen to us in response to the world's influences, through our genetic makeup and the like do not make us weak people, they make us people with sensitivities that are perhaps not average, perhaps not the same as yours, and when the weight of the world comes crashing down on an emotionally, mentally sensitive person and puts cracks in their way of life making things really difficult for them, we need to build them up, help them without stigma and ridicule.

We need compassion to comprehend their differences. Their difficulties in handling this thing we call life is not due to weakness but to their individuality.

Their weakness may exist because of your strength- and if you refuse them your strength they only grow weaker- where does the failing lie in this scenario, in truth? We have the ability to give our strength, and as long as we have no sensitivity of our own preventing that ability to give our strength, then our refusal to give strength to the weak makes us the truly weak ones, the flawed ones so much more beyond the one who is sensitive to the world in ways not fully comprehended.

That the world HAS weight that can crush us is not lost in Biblical teachings.

Some of the weight is of our own making, our own choosing. When we choose to disobey God's teachings and surround ourselves willing with sins we are covering ourselves with weights of this world. When we have knowledge of sin and know something we are doing is contrary to God's love- and we have NO repentance, no remorse, no guilt at all- we can't expect the weight of sin not to crush us.

God expects from us capable of doing so, to choose His love, His compassion, His ways of living. God knows that sin will tempt us and try us threatening to destroy us. We choose God's way over the way of sin, the right over the way of wrong, we choose to live surrounded by the weight of sin's temptation without it piling up on us.

We will never live in this world without sin tempting us on a constant basis. Some sins are more appealing to us than others and do easily capture us and it is those sins we have to lay aside. We have to recognize them and consciously decide to keep from them, to strive to keep from them, to actively choose to stop yielding to the temptation. To repent with a sincere remorse and desire not to yield to the temptation. To seek forgiveness always! To beg for whatever it is we need to keep from us from sinning.

We have entered into the race for our eternal life and along the route are millions and millions of potholes waiting to trip us up. But it's not too hard to avoid a pothole because we see it as being detrimental to our racing. Yet, also along the route are many waystations set up to tempt us to stop racing, offering us every incentive to drop out of the race. These waystations are outfitted with the most personally tempting enticements and often there is a tempter in the waystation with its foot stuck out in front of us ready to trip us up so they can pull us into their station keeping us from running.  We need to run the race with patience- with comprehension that all those temptations to keep us from running are out there waiting for us and we need to purposefully choose to look to the finish line and not let ourselves be taken captive by anything that would keep us from making it there. 

We have to look to JESUS who ran the race and won. We have to look at the horrors that Jesus endured to get to the finish line, paving the way for us. We need to keep Jesus ever before us in the race, not looking away from Him for a moment, ever dragging our focus from the tempting sins and towards Him and His love for us! He endured the greatest of temptations because He had the greatest relationship with the Father. He knew He could drop out of the race all He had to do was say the word. His temptation was so much more than any temptation we can imagine, and He never yielded! He wants us at the finish line with Him! He knows the sin weight of the world would drag us down and keep us from Him if we let it. He is there always to encourage us on toward Him. He comes to know us, every bit of our lives, as we race on and keep in constant contact with Him.

Yes, we may be called to struggle through the darkest valleys, and pits of the thickest mud on the racing route but as long as we keep our hope in that finish line where our Savior waits for us, ever pressing onward He will see us through the most world weight crushing times of our lives. Even when we break under the weight, He is there ready to keep us safe in Him as we heal. 

Our Savior will help us avoid the pot holes, get us through the rough terrain and inclement weather, and He will keep us from turning into the tempting waystations which only want to keep us from finishing the race. Our Savior gives us all the supplies we need along the racing route, we get the refreshing life giving water from Him, we get the bread of life from Him to sustain us, we get all the rest we need safe in His embrace, and the joys of true, everlasting love will be given to us.  All by HIS grace and mercy, His love now and forever!!!!!!!

Heb 12:1  Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, 

Heb 12:2  Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. 

Heb 12:3  For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.