"Let Us Throw Off Everything That Hinders"

I woke in the night to these words so I thought maybe they weren't just for me so I dug a little deeper into it in my morning time so I could share any insight with you as maybe it will help run this race we call life.

We have to take action, right? When you are running a marathon, you train continually to run that race, preparing yourself, so you can run to the best of your ability, so you can finish the race, and I know many of us want to win our race. And, it would be silly wouldn't it if you wore a heavy wool coat, pants, and socks to run in? They would hinder your performance so you take all the outer layers off, the things that would slow you down or make your race harder and run with lighter clothes, ones that allow you to move freely.

This life we live is like a race, and just like a runner trains their bodies, we need to train our minds and spirits because our bodies one day will be gone, but our spirit continues on, so we want to train it even more so than our bodies. We run races for temporal prizes, accolades, and feelings, we run the race of life to win an eternal prize. I don't know about you, but I don't want to run any more aimlessly and weighted down I spent a good share of my race doing that, and I want to run the rest of my race "in such a way as to get the prize" So I want to throw off the things that are hindering me.

There are things that we do and think, maybe because we've always been that way, done it that way, thought that way, our parents did, thought and dealt with those things that way, we are people of habit. They say we live on autopilot and almost 90% of our thoughts are the same ones we thought yesterday. I don't know about you, but the more I give thoughts to things, the more I start seeing and realizing things, so I've really been seeing things that have been hindering me, and as I throw off one, I find another and I throw it off, and oh my goodness I'm starting to see why I always felt like everything was a fight because I have been so weighted down. And believe me, those hindrances that you've carried for oh so long, try to come back even with more weight, so you have to be quick to replace the thought because a thought usually comes first, with the opposite. So let's say you struggle with envy, jealousy, or comparison, as soon as you see something in this virtual, fake world of social media it's going to come, so you have to say, "no, I don't envy" "no, I don't compare" "no I'm not jealous" and replace it with the truth. "I'm fearfully and wonderfully made, I have a plan and purpose and it's so much greater than even I can fathom" and the more you continue to do that, the more it becomes on auto-pilot we are programming our minds with new input.

"So today, let us throw off everything that hinders us and run the race that is marked out for us" I love that too, it's marked out, we don't have to run aimlessly, we have a plan and a purpose, you were created specifically to run the race you are running and you are still here, still running, so run my friend, throw off all of your burdens, the things that are weighing you down, you are cared for! I'm rooting for us!

This is another reason why I have started creating journals and publishing them like a few I did "Cast Your Cares" and "Anxious No More" with scriptures that pertain to that, as I think it may help others like it to jot down our thoughts, it helps us see where we are, and what's holding us down, and as you replace them you can see how much stronger you are and how much growth you've had.