LIFT Daily Prayer: Run the Race with Endurance | November 13, 2025
For followers of Christ seeking deepened spiritual growth and successful Christian living, the biblical mandate is clear: achieving endurance requires deliberate action in removing obstacles. Drawing from Hebrews 12:1, believers are called to lay aside two distinct categories of hindrance—every weight and the sin which so easily ensnares us—in order to effectively run the race set before them. This text serves as a powerful guide for self-examination, prayer, and achieving victory in faith.
1. Understanding the Mandate: Hebrews 12:1
The core instruction for effective spiritual living is laid out in Hebrews 12:1, urging believers to take action regarding two separate impediments:
- Every Weight: These are burdens that slow down the runner, even if they are not inherently sinful.
- The Sin Which So Easily Ensnares Us: This refers to specific, known transgressions that constantly seek re-entry into the believer’s life.
Once these hindrances are set aside, the believer is equipped to “run the race with endurance the race that is set before us”.
2. Identifying and Laying Aside “Every Weight”
A “weight” is defined as anything that is not sin but has been allowed to become a stumbling situation. Weights are often good things that have been elevated to an unhealthy status, thereby consuming energy and distracting from the core spiritual mission.
Good Things That Become Weights
The danger of weights lies in taking the beautiful things God provides and making them into idols. Examples of weights include:
- Hobbies and Pastimes: Activities like golfing, gardening, music, or other hobbies, as beautiful as they may be, become weights if they “get in the way” of spiritual priorities.
- Pleasures: Good things provided by God are transformed into burdens when they become consuming idols.
Caregiving and Worry as Weights
Crucially, “weights” can even include the emotional and mental burdens associated with deep family issues or suffering:
- Sickness and Struggle: Issues like having a child battling cancer, a troubled marriage, a wayward daughter, or caring for sick family members (such as an uncle with Parkinson’s disease or a mom with Alzheimer’s) are extremely important but can become a weight if they overwhelm or consume the believer.
- Preventing Consumption: Believers must fight every day from allowing these difficult circumstances to become a paralyzing weight, instead committing them to the Lord in prayer.
The path to releasing this burden is laying it aside—a prayerful request for God to show where a “good thing” has been made into an idol. Encouragement is given to leave prayer requests in communal forums so that others can help carry the weight off.
3. Conquering the Ensnares: Dealing with Specific Sin
The second and more dangerous obstacle is “the sin which so easily ensnares us” or “trips us up”. This refers to specific transgressions that believers know are wrong but continue to entertain.
Characteristics of Ensnares
- Persistence: These sins are described as “constantly knocking on the door” trying to get back in, despite being “ejected, expelled, [and] evicted” when the believer came to Christ.
- Vulnerability: The believer often has “very low immunity” or remains susceptible to these specific sins every time they arise in thought or circumstance.
- Impact on Growth: Allowing these sins to persist will “radically affect how you grow or don’t grow as a believer”.
Strategy for Victory
The response to ensnaring sin must be forceful:
- Identification: Ask the Lord to “turn your lamp on” to show where and how sin is weighing down life.
- Violent Rejection: The Bible instructs the believer to “just stop doing that anymore” because it is “not right, it’s not good, it’s not healthy”. This requires believers to “more violently… attack ourselves with the truth of God” regarding the specific sin.
- Surrender and Trust: Believers must bring the sin directly to Christ and say, “Here it is, take it away”. Victory over these sins has already been paid for by Christ.