Weight Loss Goals for 2026

This devotional is not about food, rather it is about the things in life that compete against the knowledge of God. We can procure a list of the many things which encumber our fellowship with Jesus, and we are encouraged to cast them all aside. It seems impossible to cast them “ALL” aside because we have become acclimated to juggling the “weights which so easily ensnare us” and our walk with Christ. To achieve any markable success in our Christian fellowship with Jesus and one another we must put off the old man/woman of 2025 and his/her deeds.

Raise your hand if you have been bedfellows with the weights of anger, wrath, malice (hatred), blasphemy, cussing, lying. (Colossians 3:8-10) Did even one of these weights, aka “works of the flesh” sucker punch you in 2025: “adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, 21 envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like…(Galatians 5:19-21)”?

Saints, we are 3 weeks into the 2026 race.  Let us dump the weights of destructive mindsets and traps that hinder our fellowship with Jesus and one another. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we can acquire a New Fitness Routine that requires endurance- that is measured out strength. What’s our New Fitness Routine? Putting on “tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering, bearing with one another, and (ooooo) forgiving one another-even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do (Colossians 3:12-13).”  Pause for a second so you can breathe-this list is not daunting, they’re like crunches, we’re just not as proficient in doing some of these.  What’s more, the New Fitness Routine yields amazing spiritual muscles like, “love, joy peace, kindness, goodness, longsuffering,  faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control. (Galatians 5:22:23).”   May our Lord grant us success in our weight loss goals and fitness routines for 2026!

PRAYER: Lord, we confess that some portions of 2025 were not our finest hour! We have sinned against you in word, thought, and deed and we have hindered our relationship with You and one another. Forgive us, Lord, and please help us to run this hilly, obstacle laden faith race with reserved, paced out, measured power and might! Thank You Jesus! We love You and thank You for knowing our frailties while equipping us with Your strength! It is in Your name I pray, “the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before You endured the cross, despising the shame, and You have sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:2),.” Amen!
By Sis. Paula Smith