Giving our hearts to Jesus does not mean that the rest of our lives will have no struggle. Faithful Christianity doesn't mean we all 'live in the burbs safe and sound with kids who are perfect and obedient.' It means that God has shown favor to us and we are laying aside every weight and sin that does so easily trap us - we must run with endurance the race that God has set before us to win that crown in Heaven.
When we talk about weight and sin, we are talking about what fuels and feeds our sins. What is a sin to one person, may not be a sin to another. Example: Exercising in-and-of-itself is NOT a sin. But when you put it above God, it turns into an idol, which then becomes a sin. For me, personally, exercise became a sin because I put it above my family, above God, above everything. For someone like my husband, exercise is not a sin. He loves to eat and more often than not, he tends to eat too much. In Proverbs 23 it states this about gluttony, "Be not among drunkards or among gluttonous eaters of meat, for the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and slumber will clothe them with rags." You are a slave to whatever is ultimate to you.
We need to take our eyes off of ourselves and fix them on Jesus, there is a new kind of humility and meekness, but also an explosion of confidence because we know that WE can't, but He can. He is the author and perfecter of our faith and there are times that difficulties aren't there to be solved, but are there as a measure of God's grace. God doesn't love the future version of you, He loves you right now. When Jesus died on the cross for our sins, He cancelled out the debt we owed because of our sins and our old version was killed on the cross with Jesus. Christ died on the cross for our sins, He cancelled out our debts and REDEEMED us! We can live a life of freedom and redemption all because of what Christ did on the cross.
Blessings,
Shannon