Hebrews 12:1 “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.”
Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion: “The acceleration produced by a particular force acting on a body is directly proportional to the magnitude of the force and inversely proportional to the mass of the body.” (aka a=F/m or F=ma)
Christianity in America is far better characterized by stagnancy rather than acceleration. Yet, the Lord desires that Christianity would be characterized by acceleration, gaining speed for His glory. We should be accelerating in our faith; we should be accelerating in our witness; we should be accelerating in our personal growth; we should be accelerating in our numerical growth; we should be accelerating in our fervency; we should be accelerating in our impact on the culture around us; we should be accelerating in our prayer life. Yet, we are not.
Newton’s 2nd Law of Motion offers two ways to accelerate. The first way is an increased external force. This could come in the form of the Lord’s displeasure and wrath at our stagnant state, causing a crisis that would prompt us to change from the status quo. The Lord used such force several times to change the direction of the nation of Israel when they had become stagnant in their faithfulness. For them, it was never a pleasant experience.
The second way to accelerate would be far less painful, and is described eloquently in Hebrews 12:1. We need to lay aside the weights that are hindering our progress. In this way, we would decrease our mass and allow the less-impactful forces of the Lord to accelerate our nation’s Christianity. We need to relinquish the influence of secular culture upon us; we need to shed the baggage of sinfulness; we need to jettison our excessive concerns about popularity; we need to drop the activities that crowd out spiritually significant pursuits; we need to release the idols of wealth and power that divert our attention from the Lord. Only then, can we accelerate without necessitating an onerous external force.
PLEASE PRAY THAT AMERICAN CHRISTIANITY WOULD ACCELERATE DUE TO OUR WILLINGNESS TO LAY ASIDE THE WEIGHTS IN OUR LIVES. Our movement forward for the Lord is inversely proportional to the wieldy weights that increasingly characterize our lives.