‘…let us lay aside every weight…’ Hebrews 12:1 NKJV
In his book Maverick, Ricardo Semler writes, ‘We were in yet another meeting… [discussing] the purchase of $50,000 worth of filing cabinets. We didn’t buy a single new cabinet that day. Instead we decided to stop the company for half a day and hold the first biannual file inspection and clean-out… Our instructions were simple: we told everyone to look inside every file folder and throw away every non-essential piece of paper… I was one of the company’s biggest file hogs, with four large cabinets and a request for two more. After our clean-up, I trimmed down to a single cabinet, and that was pretty much how it went throughout the company… The clean-up went so well that when everyone had finished, we auctioned off dozens of un-needed filing cabinets.’ The Bible says, ‘Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and… run with endurance the race… set before us.’ Now, we tend to focus on ‘sins’ and overlook ‘weights’, because sins are easy to identify and weights aren’t. But often they’re what keep us from running our best race. The problem with success is that it gives you options you didn’t have before, like owning more stuff and having to maintain it. How can you know what’s good for you and what’s not? ‘…No good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.’ (Psalm 84:11 NKJV) If God withholds it, you don’t need it! ‘Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.’ (Psalm 37:4 NKJV) When you make Jesus the Lord of your life, His desires become yours, and those are desires God will fulfil.
SoulFood: Eze 10–13, Luke 20:1–8, Ps 20, Pro 19:24–29
The Word for Today is authored by Bob and Debby Gass and published under licence from UCB International Copyright ©