“Let us throw off everything that hinders… and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus.” (Hebrews 12:1–2)
Last week, Heather and I moved from Kentucky to Ohio. The movers arrived at 9:00 Monday morning, and we finally left LaGrange, Kentucky, around 10:00 that night.
We got to the Drury Inn after midnight, crawled into bed, and then I remembered that I had forgotten to put the lock on the trailer carrying my motorcycle. So, back outside I went to dig through a packed car to find the lock and cable. I finally fell asleep around 2:30 a.m.
Tuesday morning, I met the movers at our new place at 9:00. They finally left around 7:00 that evening, and we’ve been sorting through mountains of boxes ever since. Needless to say, I barely crawled out of bed the next morning.
Here’s something you need to know about me: I’m a collector, and I’m sentimental. I collect guitars, books, vinyl records, coins, walking sticks, Pittsburgh Steelers memorabilia—and a few other things. Beyond that, I like things organized and in their place, so living out of boxes is about as miserable as it gets for me.
Heather is just the opposite. If something no longer has a practical purpose, she’s ready to throw it away. You know the type. If the food label says it expired yesterday, it’s gone.
I can’t tell you how many times while we were packing that she held something up and said, “Brian, why on earth do you still have this? You have got to get rid of some stuff!” And, of course, I always have a perfectly good reason for keeping it.
For example, I have a rather large collection of Star Wars figures from the 1970s that I’ve been told is worth a couple thousand dollars. So some things are staying! That said, I have to admit that after nearly 35 years of marriage, we have way too much stuff.
Boxes. Furniture. Clothes. Books. Things we’ve carried from house to house for years. Some of it is valuable. Some of it is sentimental. And some of it makes you wonder, Why in the world have we been carrying this around for 35 years?
Moving forces you to ask a question you normally don’t ask:
Is This Worth Carrying into the Next Season?
I think that’s a pretty good spiritual question too.
God has brought Heather and me into a new season of life and ministry at Springdale Nazarene Church. We’re excited about what lies ahead, but I’ve learned that whenever God leads us into something new, there are often things from the previous season that have to be sorted through. We have to decide what we’re going to carry forward and what we’re willing to leave behind.
There are things we absolutely need to carry with us—the lessons God has taught us, the relationships He has given us, the experiences that have made us stronger, and the stories of His faithfulness. We don’t move forward by forgetting where we’ve been. God uses every season to shape us and prepare us for the next one.
But there may also be some things we don’t need to carry anymore. Old habits. Old assumptions. Old disappointments. Maybe even some ways of doing things that served us well in another season but won’t take us where God is leading us next. The challenge is that we can become so accustomed to carrying something that we no longer recognize how much it weighs.
Hebrews says, “Throw off everything that hinders… and run with perseverance the race marked out for us.” Notice that it doesn’t just say to throw off sin. It says to throw off everything that hinders.
That distinction matters. Obviously, sinful things need to be left behind, but there are also things that aren’t necessarily wrong—they’re simply no longer helpful. Something may have been good in one season and become a hindrance in another. Something may be meaningful to us and still be weighing us down.
Something Doesn’t Have to Be Bad to Become Baggage
Sometimes we carry things simply because we’ve always carried them. We carry old expectations, old wounds, old methods, old fears, and old ways of thinking. They’ve been in the box so long that we’ve stopped asking whether they still belong there.
Maybe every once in a while, spiritually speaking, we need to open the boxes and take inventory. We need to ask ourselves: What am I carrying that God never intended me to carry into this season? What needs to stay? What needs to go? What do I need to carry forward, and what do I need to leave behind?
Those aren’t always easy questions because letting go can be difficult—especially when what we’re carrying has been with us for a long time. But we can’t run freely while insisting on carrying everything from every previous season with us.
I believe God always has something ahead of us worth running toward. And ultimately, that’s why the most important part of this passage may be the last phrase: “fixing our eyes on Jesus.”
That’s where our focus has to remain. We’re not chasing programs. We’re not chasing numbers. We’re not trying to preserve the past or manufacture the future. We’re not trying to recreate what God did somewhere else or even what He did in another season.
We’re Chasing Jesus!
And wherever He leads, we want to be ready to move.
