“Let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run (active persistence the appointed course) the race that is set before us.” Hebrews 12:1 Amp
The definition for weight in this verse is heaviness or a burden that you carry around. It is always with you and influences every action you take.
People who have grown up in dysfunctional or alcoholic homes may be weighted down by this unexplained heaviness. The difficult situations they have faced growing up were much greater than those of someone who grew up in a healthy home. When faced with difficult situations, a person’s natural response is to blame and judge. You can judge by simply criticizing or looking down on someone for their mistakes.
If you grew up in a dysfunctional home you had many opportunities to criticize, so you may have left home with many judgments. Years later, you may still be carrying around a lot of unexplained weight from judgments that were made and forgotten. But this weight is still there, and it will keep you bogged down and hindered from running the race that is set before you. The weight from judgments actually gets heavier as the years go by.
Judgments also bind you up, and you are bound to do the very same thing you judged someone else for doing. The judgment actually keeps you from doing what you want to do. You are bound up and weighted down by the sin of the judgment.
Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. Mathew 7:1-5
What are the specific judgments that you realize you have made? Once you recognize a judgment, you must first repent to God; then with His help, you can lay aside that weight and sin that has easily beset you for so many years.
Written by Denise Boggs.