Lifting Weights
By Pastor Jim May
(Parts of this message were adapted from a message by Rev. David Wilkerson)
Extra weight – now there’s a subject that most Americans would love to avoid. A few people are able to go about their lives without the worry of too much weight, but for most of us, it is a constant nagging problem. Learning to control it before it controls you requires a lot of discipline and vigilance, and trying to get rid of it requires more discipline than many of us have. Of course there are all kinds of reasons why the weight stays on us. Sometimes it’s because of chemical imbalances in our body. Perhaps there is a medical reason such as thyroid problems. Sometimes the medications that are prescribed to help with one medical condition have the side effect of weight gain. And then there’s the fact that some of us just need to get more exercise and especially learn to do a few “push-aways” every day. Push away from the fridge. Push away from the table. And push away from the vending machines.
People try all types of programs to get rid of the extra weight. They go to various support and dieting groups like Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig or Nutri-system. These have helped a lot of people.
Weight Watchers is one of the most popular programs. If you join, you attend meetings once a week for less than an hour. There’s no contract, so you pay as you go. Each week you have a confidential weigh-in to help you track your progress. You learn how to make wise choices, eat healthy and enjoy food and exercise. Every week you get new tips and program materials to help you follow their plan that is referred to as “Turn Around”. You can enjoy support from the meetings leader who lost weight with Weight Watchers, and is a trained expert in the program who is committed to your success. You also benefit from the exchange of tips, recipes and the practical experiences others’. Getting started is easy. Simply attend a meeting near you and give it your best.
Of course if you are like me and you don’t want to confess to strangers that you have a problem with just a tiny bit of extra weight, then you will try to lose it on your own without having to attend those pesky meetings every week. We try to find our own diet plan. Have you ever found one that worked? For me it’s just a roller coaster ride because I don’t stay on any of them for long.
But don’t be discouraged. If the last one didn’t work there are always many more to choose from. In fact, I found one place on the Internet where there are over 85 diet plans listed. I checked them out and I am convinced that of those 85 plans, there are four that I believe will really work. Of course the key is to stick to the diet.
Paleolithic diet -The Paleolithic diet, also known as the caveman diet, paleo diet, prehistoric diet, Stone Age diet, or hunter-gatherer diet. You only get to eat dinosaur meat off the bone that has been cooked over an open fire that was started with two flint rocks. Oh, and you can eat a few wild berries if you find some. but none of that store-bought stuff. It has to come right out of the woods, fresh picked and unwashed.
Warrior Diet – In this diet you can only eat what you can catch or kill and you must eat it raw. Road kill is not acceptable unless you are the one driving.
100-Mile Diet – In this one you must walk a minimum of 100 miles from home to find a farm each time where you can pick your veggies fresh. But you must carry them back home to wash them before eating.
Breatharian diet – Now this diet may actually work in Louisiana. This diet is based upon the belief that food and possibly water are not really necessary. People can live by just breathing air and swallowing sunlight. So take a big breath, and grab a bite of light and stay thin.
Now some of this may be funny, and for some of us, it’s not all that funny because we do have a problem with controlling our weight. It is a constant daily struggle just to keep from gaining more, much less trying to lose some of what is already there. It’s as though we have been “attacked from all sides” because the pounds seem to just appear where they weren’t yesterday. We are constantly harrassed by the fact that everything we drink, or eat, regardless of how much we diet, still adds on the weight. We feel hemmed in and surrounded by that weight and it is stuck to us and won’t let go.
It would really be great to be able to have some of that weight lifted off so that we could be better able to enjoy life, but it seems to be such an impossible task that most people just quit trying after a while.
But I want you to know that we all have another kind of weight problem. It’s not a matter of weight that we all can see, or that shows up on a bathroom scale. This is a weight problem that we can often keep out of sight for a long time, and yet it is a weight problem that plagues us all the time.
Hebrews 12:1-2, "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, 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."
You have come to the right meeting this morning. You have come to the Spiritual Weight Watchers meeting. We come here week after week for the purpose of trying to lay aside every weight that keeps us from running this race to Heaven’s Gates. Sometimes it seems as though we are really being successful and then all of a sudden, that little weight shows up again. Just when we think that our heart is absolutely pure before God, out of that heart comes sin, and it besets us so easily.
What is a “besetting” sin? Just like the weight that we talked about, it is sin that seems to attack you from all sides at once. You have your Christian armor on. You are trying to serve the Lord with all your heart and then it comes. You have battled that sin for years. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but it is always there, tempting you, harassing you and it is very persistent. You just can’t seem to lay it down once and for all.
Sometimes you feel hemmed in. It’s such a little thing, but it carries a lot of weight. Your besetting sin starts off small, but then it builds and grows until you feel trapped in a web of sin and deceit. It’s as though it was stapled, studded or nailed to your heart and you just can’t seem to shake it off.
The Apostle Paul understood how you feel. I don’t know what there was in Paul’s life that constantly hemmed him in, but you can sense that something is there when he said in Romans 7:18-19, "For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do."
Isaiah 53:6, "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."
When the Rich Young Ruler came running to Jesus saying, “good master, what shall I do to obtain eternal life”, listen to what Jesus had to say in Mark 10:18, "And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God."
Of course Jesus is God and He is Good for God is Good, but he said it this way because He knew that the Rich Young Ruler only thought of him as another Rabbi and not as the Son of God. If he was no more than another Rabbi, another priest, or another teacher among men, then why should he be considered as being good?
When that young man found that he could not meet the standards of holiness, and that he was beset by the sins of the flesh, he turned and walked away, giving up his chance for eternal life because he loved the things of this world more than the things of God.
Sin causes Christians to become cowards who live in humiliating defeat. They can’t stand up with courage against sin because there is secret sin in their own lives. They excuse the sins of others because of the disobedience in their own hearts and they can’t preach victory because they live in defeat.
Some of them once knew what it was like to live victoriously. They experienced the power, the courage, and the blessings that come to those who are obedient to the Lord. Today they are but a shadow of their old selves. Now they hang their heads in shame, unable to look the world in the eye, victimized by a sin that rules their lives. A besetting sin has robbed them of their spiritual victory and one sin turns into more sin until they are hemmed in by sin and unable to live for God as they should.
I won’t call his name, but there is a man who sells used cars in Texas who was once a powerful evangelist. He once stood in the pulpit as a preacher of the Gospel and thousands were converted through his ministry. But he had as besetting sin. Because he didn’t repent of that sin and lay it aside, he became an adulterer. He left his wife and ran off with his girlfriend, one of the young women who attended his revival meetings. In just a few weeks, he lost everything that had been dear to him. That preacher is now nothing but a shell of his old self. To see him shuffle about, beaten down, shattered and sad is a pitiful sight! He lives in constant fear and spends sleepless nights thinking of what could have been. His anxieties have made him physically ill. He has heart trouble, ulcers and high blood pressure. Oh, he has repented of his sin, but he cannot undo the past. God forgives, but people don’t and now he must live with the results of his besetting sin for the rest of his days.
That minister has been overpowered by the enemies of guilt, fear and depression. Sin weakens all resistance; it turns warriors into weaklings. Lust conceives, then it brings on sin, and sin brings on the enemy to destroy.
America is in trouble today. We are in trouble today because we who call ourselves Born Again Christians cannot seem to overcome the enemies that attack us. Instead of casting that sin from our heart and life, we embrace it and hold on to it until it catches us in its trap of defeat.
I am convinced that because we cannot overcome our besetting sin, that sin keeps us bound up and then our enemies are able to just walk in and do their worst. Our worst enemies are not the terrorists, or the communists or any other force of man. Our worst enemies are within ourselves. Our enemies are fear, depression, guilt, condemnation, worry, anxiety, loneliness, emptiness, despair.
God stirred up some enemies against King David when David sinned with Bath-Sheba. And I believe that God still "stirs up adversaries" against a sinful, compromising people? Can it be that these modern-day enemies are overpowering many of God’s people because of their hidden sin and backsliding? God’s message is simple, "Obey and be blessed or disobey and suffer."
Romans 8:6, "For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace."
We have had enough teaching on how to cope with our problems and fear. We have not had enough teaching about how to deal with sin in our lives. You can’t heal cancer by putting patches on it. It has to be removed. We will continue to be bound people as long as we excuse the sin in us. Sin is at the root of all our problems. Sin causes fear, guilt and depression. But we do not know how to overcome the sin that so easily besets us.
Most of the books you read, and the messages you hear, about achieving Christ’s righteousness - and how to live a holy life - never tell you how to get and keep the victory over sin. We hear it preached at us all the time, "Sin is your enemy. God hates your sin. Walk in the Spirit. Forsake your evil ways. Lay aside that sin you keep indulging in. Don’t be bound by the cords of your own iniquity."
That’s good advice but how do you overcome a sin that has become a habit? How can you lay sin aside so that you can run this race successfully? How can you have the victory over a besetting sin that almost becomes a part of your life? You hate that sin; you keep promising God that you will never do it again. You cry over it and live in sorrow over what it does to you - but how do you walk away from it? How do you reach the point where that sin no longer hangs on to you?
Here’s what we say to ourselves when we are battling a besetting sin. "I can’t tell anybody what my secret battle is; it’s between the Lord and me. I’ve prayed for deliverance for a long time. I’ve promised a thousand times to quit. Yet I still live in torment. The fear of God haunts me because I know it’s wrong. But no matter how hard I try to stop I keep on doing it. I guess it’s just my “thorn in the flesh”.
I stand before you today, preaching to you about having the victory over your besetting sin but there isn’t any secret formula or simple solution for you. Repentance, in and of itself is great, but we all know that sometimes the sin comes back even though we have truly repented. So what can we do to get the victory?
Again, Paul faced this same question and this was his answer in Romans 7:24-25, "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin."
Yes, I know. I’ve heard it time and again that victory over all our enemies is through Jesus Christ the Lord. But how do we get the power of God into our own life? How does this thing work? I love Jesus; always have; I know He has all power. I know He promises me victory, but just what does it mean? How does the victory come? It’s not enough to be forgiven; I need to be free from going back to that sin.
How can I lay aside every besetting sin? How can I get rid of all this spiritual weight of sin that I am carrying around? Is there no way to really overcome it and live in victory? Yes there is a way. Jesus is that way! But it isn’t always easy to accomplish.
Let me give you three things that might help you to be an over comer in spite of that sin.
First you must learn to hunger for holiness and truly hate that besetting sin! You can’t play with it, flirt with it, and not expect to get burned by it. If you play with fire, sooner or later you will get burned. That’s just a pure and simple fact of life. You will reap what you sow and if you sow seeds of wrong thinking then you will reap a repetition of that sin again and again.
You must remind yourself that God hates that sin, no matter how small it may seem in your eyes, or how small it may seem in comparison to what other people are doing. God still hates it just as much.
God hates it because it weakens you and makes you afraid to try to live a life of holiness. If you cannot live holy, then you cannot be a vessel of honor to do His work on earth. If you excuse your sin as a weakness - if you make yourself believe that somehow you will be an exception and that God will bend over backwards to comply with your needs - if you put out of your mind all thoughts of punishment for that sin - then you are on the way to accepting that sin and opening yourself having to a reprobate mind. God wants you to hate that sin - to hate it with all that is within you. There can be no victory or deliverance from sin until you are convinced God will not permit it!
God cannot look upon sin; He cannot condone it; He cannot make a single exception - so face it! It is wrong! Don’t expect to be excused or to be given special privileges. God must act against all sin that threatens to destroy one of His children. It is wrong and nothing will ever make it right. Sin pollutes the pure stream of holiness flowing through me. It must be confessed and forsaken. Don’t excuse it, or sweep it under a rug. Confess it and repent of it and do your best to stop it, and keep on doing it every time you fail.
Secondly, I want you to know that God loves you in spite of your sin!
God hates that sin with a perfect hatred while, at the same time, He loves you with an unending love. His love will never once compromise with sin, but He clings to His sinning child with one purpose in mind - to reclaim him.
His judgment against your besetting sin is balanced by His great compassion and love for you as His child. Your reason for repentance should not be just because you fear God’s judgment, but because you know that Jesus loves you and He wants to deliver you. He wants you to make Heaven your eternal home.
God pities you! He knows the agony of your battle against those besetting sins. He is never far away but He is always there, reassuring us that nothing can ever separate us from His love. God will never hurt you, strike you or abandon you while you are in the process of hating that sin and seeking help and deliverance. While you are swimming against the tide, He is always on shore, ready to throw you a life line.
Thirdly, in this battle against besetting sin, you must accept the help of your loving Heavenly Father in resisting and overcoming that sin.
Besetting Sin is like an octopus with many tentacles trying to crush out your life. Seldom do all tentacles loosen their hold on you at once. It is one tentacle at a time. In this war against sin, it is victory obtained by killing one soldier at a time. Seldom does the entire enemy army fall dead, or turn and run, with a single shot. It is hand-to-hand combat; one small victory at a time. God doesn’t send us out to do battle without a battle plan. He is our Commander; and we must fight the war against besetting sin, inch by inch, hour by hour, under His direction until the war is won. Like natural wars, this war against besetting sin can take years. But there are times when the war is won a lot quicker.
The Holy Spirit comes to me us with clear direction on how to fight, when to run, where to strike next. This battle against principalities and powers is His war against the devil - not mine. I am just a soldier, fighting in His war. I may get weary, wounded and discouraged, but I can keep on fighting because I know that it is God who gives the orders. I am a volunteer in His war. I am ready to do His will at all costs. I will wait for His orders on how to win. Those directions come slowly at times. The battle seems to go against us, but -in the end we know that we win. God wants us to just believe in Him. Like Abraham, our faith is counted unto us as righteousness. The only part we can play in this war is to believe that God will bring us out of the battle victoriously.
What we do about the sin in our lives determines how our enemies will behave. Victory over besetting sin causes all of our other enemies to run. Worry, fear, guilt, anxiety, depression, restlessness, loneliness are my enemies. But they can only hurt us only when sin removes our armor. If we live in righteousness we can still have God’s protective cover. Just don’t give up.
Do you want victory over all your enemies? Then go at it the right way by dealing with your besetting sin. Do all you can to remove that sin from your life, whatever it might be. If you will do all you can, then God will do the rest, and in time, you will become mighty in God and free from that sin at last.
If we couldn’t lay it down, why would the Word of God tell us to do so? It isn’t easy but it can be done with God’s help. So don’t give up in despair. Keep on fighting against that besetting sin until you are the over comer.
Keep on coming to the weekly meetings where you can gain the strength and find the support group to help you in times of weakness. Stay faithful in your service to the Lord and let the Word of God cleanse you a little at a time until you are fully clean.
Hebrews 12:1-2, "…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, 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."
If you are plagued by a besetting sin, we want to pray with you this morning. This doesn’t mean that you a backslidden. It just means that you recognize a weakness in yourself and that you need God’s help to overcome it. We are here for you. There is no one here that has not had to battle besetting sins. Let’s pray together.
