Living to love with Jesus in freedom

I want to encourage us again from Hebrews 12:1. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, The author encouraged his readers to lay aside the sin that so easily entangles us—the sin of unbelief (3:12-13). I mentioned yesterday that unbelief looks at what we can see, experience, and desire on the earth. You might remember that the apostle Paul admonished his readers in Colossians 3:2, “Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth.” We will see that this author says the same thing in Heb. 12:2, “fixing our eyes on Jesus.”  Living to love with Jesus only occurs when we abide in Christ and keep our eyes fixed on Him. The moment our minds set on something we can see or experience on the earth, in that moment we succumb to unbelief. I can almost hear you replying, “It’s impossible to keep our minds constantly set on things above.” Exactly, that’s why in this verse he spoke of the sin which so easily entangles us. Reacting to people and things on the earth is such an easy thing to do, isn't it? What we see, hear, and experience on the earth entangles us. The word carries the idea of something encircling us. It’s all around us.  The encouragement I give you today is that you can expect that you will have to turn your mind to God’s throne of grace dozens of times a day. It will take endurance of a supernatural kind to live to love with Jesus. We’ll talk about endurance tomorrow, but today I hope to encourage you not to be discouraged by how much you have to intentionally turn your mind off of the circumstances in your life and turn it to Jesus. How quickly your mind becomes occupied with ways you can escape hardship, suffering, and pain in your own strength and wisdom. Even if you could figure out a way of escape, if you did it without reliance upon Jesus, it would bring Him no glory and therefore be a waste of time and energy. God only gets the glory if our responses flow out of Jesus’ life. We can only respond with His love as we abide in Him, which is impossible if we have our eyes fixed on the circumstances.  Also, consider how easy it is to get entangled in trying to figure out the “why” behind circumstances from an earthly perspective. You can spend literally hours, days, weeks, and years consumed with assessing who did what, what shouldn’t have happened, what you wish had happened, and finding out who’s to blame for the problem. That is the fruit of the sin of unbelief. And yes, look how easily it entangles you.  So today, be prepared to lay aside this sin of unbelief many times so you can live to love with Jesus in freedom.