A Really Good Question

This week I was given the question: How do I stop my sins from weighing me down?
The short answer is: strip them off! The longer answer is: run in such a way that you long to strip them off.
Hebrews 12:1 Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, 2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
This describes a marathon race and suggests that if we are to effectively complete the race marked out for us, we will need to strip off everything that slows us down. The writer describes these as weights and sins.
Weights are not necessarily sins - they are all the unnecessary baggage that when added to our lives has the cumulative effect of making us sluggish and slow in our Christian race.
Sins are like sticky vines and roots that easily trip us up, cling to us and slow us down, or overhang the path deceiving us into sidetracks.
The Hebrew Christians to whom this letter was written, had lost their 'fight'. They were no longer living on a competitive footing. They had become soft and distracted and were in danger of slipping away and fading to the rear of the pack so they failed to finish the race. The writer is urging them to get running!
It seems that if we get running, we will very quickly become aware of the surplus weight that is slowing us down and the sins that easily entangle us. Faithful running down the path Jesus has marked out for us, will soon get us discarding our unnecessary baggage and breaking through the sins that easily blocked our path when were were moving so sluggishly and aimlessly that we were making little or no progress at all.
1 Corinthians 9.24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.