About

Taisa Efseaff Maffey graduated from Western Oregon University in 2010 with her bachelor's degree in English Literature.  She currently lives with her husband extraordinaire, Ethan, in Seattle, Washington, where she keeps house, writes, researches nutrition and naturopathic medicine, and works on developing her cooking and baking techniques.

A Note from Taisa:

I started this blog in November of 2014, immediately after quitting my full-time job as a legal assistant and becoming a full-time stay-at-home wife.  I ended up naming the blog “laying aside every weight” based on Hebrews 12:1-2:

“Therefore we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith[...].”

My purpose in writing this blog is to encourage others to reflect on their lives and consider whether or not they are living the lives that God intended for them.  This begins by understanding who we are in relation to God:

1. God is our creator, and He is holy, perfect, and righteous.  “For I am the Lord your God.  You shall therefore consecrate yourselves, and you shall be holy; for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44).  “He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He” (Deuteronomy 32:4).
2. We are not perfect.  In fact, we are all sinners who disobey God by breaking His commandments.  The Bible says that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23) and “there is none righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10.)
3. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).  Because God is holy and perfect and righteous, He must hold people accountable for their sins, and He cannot allow sinful people to dwell with Him in heaven.  Therefore, the penalty for sin is death –– eternal death in hell.  If God didn’t hold people accountable for their sins but instead sent everyone on to heaven regardless of their actions, there would be no justice.  It would be the equivalent of someone committing numerous crimes and then the judge sending him on vacation to a luxurious tropical resort instead of sentencing him to serious jail time.  If God overlooked our sins and didn’t hold us accountable for them, then He could not be considered righteous or fair.
4. Because our sins sentence us to death, which is obviously a punishment we can neither escape nor survive, God came down to earth as man, Jesus Christ, and lived a perfect, sinless life on our behalves.  He met the standard of perfection that none of us could possibly attain, and then He provided atonement for our sins by sacrificing Himself through death on the cross.  “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
5. Not only did Jesus die for our sins, but then he was resurrected back to life three days after his crucifixion (Matthew 28, Mark 16, Luke 24, John 20).
6. If we want to avoid paying the penalty of eternal death for our sins, and if we want to go to heaven when we die, we need to accept God’s gift of salvation through Jesus Christ’s sacrificial death and resurrection.  The Bible says “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9).  “Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live’” (John 11:25).  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

To recap, if you acknowledge that you’re a sinner in need of God’s forgiveness, and if you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sins and then was resurrected back to life, triumphing over sin and death, then you will have eternal salvation and can know with certainty that you will go to heaven when you die.

But once you’re saved, the journey obviously doesn’t end there.  For those of us who are saved, there are still a lot of things that can trip us up, bring us down, and lead us astray as we go through life here on this earth.  We are daily inundated with false teachings, immoral influences, and worldly temptations.  That is why I pulled the name of this blog from Hebrews 12:1-2.  It is my desire to encourage others to “lay aside every weight” and build their lives upon the foundation of Truth that God has provided for us through His Word.

Because of the ubiquitous nature of the secular media in today’s world, it is my goal to propagate the proper perspective on issues that come up in everyday life by examining those issues through a Biblical lens.  By turning to the Word of God, we can learn what the Author and Finisher of our faith has to say about any given subject and realign our thinking with His.  When we align our thinking with His, obey His Word, and live our lives as He intends, we can “lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and […] run with endurance the race that is set before us.”  And win.