In Hebrews, the Bible talks about removing all encumberances that block you from being able to worship and live the way God wants you to live:

¹Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. ²Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

—Hebrews 12: 1-2

It’s about being a Christian for the long run, getting the roadblocks out of the way so you can stay focused on serving God rather than being pushed around by things that aren’t really as important as they may seem.

There have been plenty of entanglements in my life in the past few years. Some of them aren’t sins at all in and of themselves, but can be when you focus too much on them. Watching television or surfing the net, for example, aren’t necessarily sinful (depending on what you look at, of course). But even watching only Disney movies, when that takes so much time that you don’t take time for prayer or other things that you need to be doing, particularly when it comes to serving God or following what He wants you to do with your life…well, that becomes a problem.

My biggest spiritual entanglements at the moment are debt and impatience.  Sure, I can do something about both, and I’m working on them.  But the stress over debt — debt I shouldn’t have ever built up to begin with — takes too much of my focus.  And impatience over working out solutions and then actually making those solutions work is enough to keep me discouraged if I don’t stay focused on the long distance plan.

Yes, I’d love to have a rich relative who’d just write me a check so that I could just pay off what I owe to the credit cards and be done with it.  But since I don’t have rich relatives — no Uncle Moneybags in the family tree — I have to stick with my own plan to get the debt off the books.  And unfortunately, it will take time.  I can’t get completely out of debt in two months.  It’ll take at least a full year, even with me doing my best, in the absence of a winning lottery ticket or unexpected windfall.  So I have to be patient.  And focused.

I’m trying to listen — really listen — to what God is telling me to do.  On a variety of levels.  It’s not easy to do sometimes, but no one ever said being a Christian is supposed to be easy.

But I want those roadblocks out of the way, so I can figure out what I need to do for the long haul.