The first step

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go. (Herman Hesse)

I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us. (Philippians 3:12-14)

Too many times we hold onto our mistakes, focusing all our thought and attention on them instead of what Christ wants to do with them. He actually wants to use them as a catapult to move us forward, not anchor us to the past. God is always doing something new - reminding us to forget what lies in the past and focus on the new (Isaiah 43:18-19). God is making a way forward, but we have to step out into it if we are to ever be free of our past. When we focus on today, we are letting go of those things we are unable to change and leaning into what God wants to do with and through us today. 

Psalm 55:22 tells us to cast our burdens on the Lord so that he can sustain us. In other words, we 'throw off' what is not useful and move toward what is most promising - Christ's grace, provision, and purpose. Some of us are still trying to make sense of some hurt or hang-up in our past, all the while missing out on what God is so eager to do in our present. Sometimes we just need to let go of the drive to understand - to make sense of it all. We may never fully appreciate the things that created such disappointment or disgust in our lives, so we must not dwell upon them. 

When we begin to put all our cares and worries about those things upon the shoulders of Christ, we let the one who can bear that burden carry it. How do we do that? 'Cast' carries the idea of putting forth effort in order to no longer be in control of what we once held so closely. We no longer desire to carry the thing - so we throw it far from us. It isn't useful to us; therefore, it needs to be removed as far from us as possible. No one moves forward until they unburden themselves from the past. Maybe our way forward begins with the first step of letting go of the burden of our mistakes. Just sayin!

Just sayin...

When I felt my feet slipping, you came with your love and kept me steady. And when I was burdened with worries, you comforted me and made me feel secure. (Psalm 94:18-19)

On ice, the small steps you have to take to avoid having your feet go out from under you, or the slower speeds you must drive in order to avoid a spin-out are "precautionary measures" you PERSONALLY take to keep yourself from loss or injury. There are clearly times when all you can do personally is just not enough to keep you upright and on course, though. Your reliance upon another to be there to catch you when you begin to slip, or the street sanding being ever vigilant is something outside of yourself you are hoping will keep you in a position of safety. We use both internal and external sources to aid in keeping us safe. What we may fail to recognize is the two most important "internal and external" sources of safety at our disposal - the presence and power of God. God expects us to have a certain amount of "precautionary measures" in place in our spiritual, emotional, and intellectual lives, but when our defenses are less than ideal in any of these areas, he is at the ready to keep us from harm.

Have you ever noticed that you don't just "slip" - you somehow "know" you are slipping, but you may not be cognizant of the fact you need to catch yourself before you do! God's ability to keep us steady when we begin to feel our "standing" slipping away is unparalleled. What is it God uses to "steady us" in our walk? Nothing less than his love! If we can just get a picture of this, we may face our "slips" a little differently - perhaps not as though they were the biggest blundering we could have done us having to find some way to "get back up" all on our own. It is his love which comes to our rescue - his unconditional, "I will ALWAYS love you", never late love. God comes with his love - it is this love which keeps us steady. Most of us long for love of this kind while we are here on this earth but forget how much we already have this love! We just need to be embraced fully by it and then rest secure in it.

Being burdened with something we weren't meant to carry on our own is one of the places we can 'slip' very easily. The issue is not that we "can" carry these things, but that we weren't designed to carry them "alone". I "can" carry heavy bags of cement - but I am no longer going to do it. Why? I value my knees and my back! I will ask for help if there is a project involving me needing cement to be mixed around my home. I "can" carry lots and lots of stress, with multiple challenging issues pressing in around me - but I choose to share the load with others. Why? I value my sanity! What we value will begin to get our attention. If we come to value the "load bearing shift" God asks of us, we will begin to give this some attention in our lives. God helps us deal with the difference between "I can" and "I choose" when it comes to the burdens of worries in our lives. We "can" determine to bear up under their load. We "choose" to allow him to carry them on our behalf. 

We might not want to let go at first, but he helps us recognize the "efficiency" of allowing the one who knows the end from the beginning to bear the load which will ultimately trip us up if we choose to say, "I can do this on my own". You are not in this alone, for all of us have to come to the place of laying down our "I can" and picking up our "I choose" moments. Even those "I choose" moments are made possible because God comes to us with his comfort and his ability to soothe our feelings of guilt we might encounter by not carrying these burdens all by ourselves. Everything we need to let go is at our disposal - all it takes is us opening up our hands and releasing what we have been holding onto in our frustration, pride, and fear! Most of us need more of God's comfort and care than we openly choose to admit, but when we finally take the first step of admitting this to ourselves, heaven's gates are opened on our behalf. This is where God can connect his resources with our need - his love with our slips, his comfort with our burdens, and his treasured peace with our "feelings" of guilt, anxiety, and fear. Just sayin!

Kneel First, Stand Second

“But as for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and he will stand upon the earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God! I will see him for myself. Yes, I will see him with my own eyes. I am overwhelmed at the thought!" (Job 19:25-27)

One of my favorite worship songs is "My Redeemer Lives" by Hillsong Worship. Some of my favorite words in those lyrics are, "My shame, He's taken away, My pain is healed in His name", as they speak volumes about how God works in our lives. Job was plagued by the loss of family, livestock, worldly possessions, and even his own health. Yet, in the moments of his greatest external and internal conflict, he stands assured his Redeemer lives and all will one day be well again in his life. He has been buffeted by everything that should have 'taken him down', but he stands! 

We might find ourselves buffeted by what life throws our way, but we can stand strong in the knowledge that nothing we 'lose' is going to 'do us in'. We have the living, breathing God of the universe within us. As children of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, we stand in the face of adversity, buffeted, but not beaten. God's greatest desire is for us to 'see with our own eyes' his grace and goodness. He doesn't want us to just experience him through 'second-hand' religion. As the worship song continues, "You lift my burdens, I'll rise with You. I'm dancing on this mountain top, to see Your kingdom come..." This sounds a bit like Job's declaration, doesn't it?

There are going to be those moments when we feel like life is crumbling in around us and we just might not want to go on any longer but remember this - your Redeemer stands stronger than whatever is buffeting you at this moment! We may not fully understand the burdens we are bearing right now, but he knows exactly how to lift them. We may not understand why we are in such a pit of despair, but he has the power to put us on mountain tops once again. Our stance in the midst of the darkest places should be to stand, but before we stand, we may have to kneel a bit! Just sayin!

Irritants are burdens

Are you being an irritant or surrounded by irritants? A telling question indeed, for many of the things that actually irritate us about others are things that irritate us about ourselves! Mom always used to say, "It takes one to know one" and she was pretty 'spot-on' with that observation. If you are able to see such things as kindness, goodness, and graciousness in others FIRST, above all their other traits, you are likely doing pretty well allowing God to develop those traits deep within your heart, as well.

Never let loyalty and kindness leave you! Tie them around your neck as a reminder. Write them deep within your heart. Then you will find favor with both God and people, and you will earn a good reputation. (Proverbs 3:3-4)

Irritants are burdens none of us want to carry - much less emulate in our lives. I found it amazing that one tiny 'burr' under the saddle blanket could cause a horse to act up so much. They become downright 'agitated' by that tiny burr! How many times do we find ourselves getting irritated by the 'small stuff' in life? When we find that happening, we might want to consider how much 'weight' we are applying to the 'irritant'. 

The horse doesn't consider the size of the burr, he just feels the pressure of all the weight placed against it! Sometimes we apply way too much 'weight' to the 'burr'. We allow other pressures to build up around that one tiny 'irritant' and then we are downright 'agitated' by such a small thing. Most of the stuff we 'wig out' over is really not all that 'insurmountable' - it just gets us 'amped up' because we don't want to admit how much weight we are carrying ourselves over that same 'insurmountable' thing in our own lives.

Some of us would do well to focus on the 'weight' of all that guilt and shame we are carrying over that 'burr' in our lives. When we unburden ourselves of that unnecessary weight, the burr becomes obvious and easier to remove. We can look for the 'burr' under the saddle all we want, but until we remove the saddle we have no idea where to even look! We just feel the pressure and know something isn't right. When another comes along with a similar 'burr', we react. God is asking us to let kindness and graciousness be our response by getting rid of all that stuff piled upon our own 'burr'. Just sayin!

Don't be a pack mule

Shoulder each other’s burdens, and then you will live as the law of the Anointed teaches us.  (Galatians 6:2 VOICE)

What burden do you have that I might shoulder on your behalf today? If someone were to ask you that question, could you really answer it honestly? Or would you be like most of the majority of believers and simply resign yourself to having to carry that burden yourself? For some strange reason, we have the hardest time allowing another to step into our "mess" of a life and take any of our burden from us. It may be that we carry the burden simply because we think if we admit it to anyone else they will judge us or think it is ridiculous for us to be shouldering it at all. It is as though we "judge" our burden by the burdens we see others carrying and see ours as just not as "big" or "serious" as those they carry, so we just shoulder it alone. You know what? No burden is ever as heavy as the one we are carrying right now, regardless of the size!

Mom is nearly 98 now and I have pretty lightweight dishes compared to my daughter's. I use Corning Corelle dishes and she uses stone wear type. Carry my daughter's across the room and you know you have carried it! To mom, it doesn't matter - both are heavy! Her strength to carry even the slightest of burdens at her age is much less than mine, and mine is much less than my daughter's! Why? The effects of aging have placed limitations - not the size of the burden, just the fact of being physically able to do so. It isn't the size of our burden, or the "importance" of it in the eyes of others, it is the fact we are not to shoulder it alone! It may be we are not emotionally as strong as we would want to be in order to shoulder it well. It could be that we aren't able to balance this burden with the weight of another we are about to have placed upon us in short order. Regardless, we need to share the burdens we have with others. The effects of life's events place burdens upon us in measures we might not be able to handle - we need the help of another to help us out from under them.

When Paul pens these words of instruction to us believers, he isn't just giving a mere suggestion - it is an imperative to carry one another's burdens. Why? The burden we carry is what is causing us to stumble and fall - the weight of it is too much for us alone. We need a chance to heal, be restored, and come out stronger - something we cannot do as long as we are straining to carry that burden all by ourselves. These instructions come right after he says: "My spiritual brothers and sisters (that means all of us believers who share the same faith and rely upon the same grace to redeem us from our sins), if one of our faithful (note he uses the word "our" faithful - because we belong to each other in this family of faith - we have an obligation to look out for each other) has fallen into a trap and is snared by sin, (what we don't avoid can become the thing that trips us up the easiest and when carrying a burden it is easier to not see the trap) don't stand idle and watch his demise. Gently restore him, being careful not to step into your own snare."

Yes, admitting we have a burden is hard. Yes, it can be a little embarrassing at times. Yes, it can even mean we have to let another know we aren't as "perfect" as they might think we are. But...to shoulder it alone is to guarantee we won't be as able to avoid the next snare in our path, or improve our chances of carrying even more burden upon the present one we are so reluctant to share with anyone right now.  There is no easy way to let another share our burden, but in honest confession of our need it is possible we might just find out that there are others who have already shouldered that burden in their own life and been able to let it go, as well!  Just sayin!

I am not "yoking" around!

Weary?  Burdened?  Then you are likely in a place where you have stepped outside of Jesus' care over your lives and are trying to do things in your own strength.  Weary and burdened existence is usually because we find it so doggone hard to let anyone else be in control of our lives - demanding to hold on for dear life despite the obstacles in our path. Most work animals, such as the oxen or horses, will not look upon a yoke as a great piece of "jewelry" or even an "adornment". In fact, when they see the yoke there are some animals who might just say, "Nope, not gonna happen!"  Honesty is the best medicine here, so I must admit, there are times when I have said those words!  Yet, when I finally submit to the yoke, I find I am taken in a totally different direction than I had planned.  What the yoke does is bind me together with others traveling in the same direction I am now bound, and it allows someone who knows the directions to my destination to drive my life!

The Father has handed over everything to My care. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son—and those to whom the Son wishes to reveal the Father. Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Put My yoke upon your shoulders—it might appear heavy at first, but it is perfectly fitted to your curves. Learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart. When you are yoked to Me, your weary souls will find rest. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light. (Matthew 11:27-30 VOICE)

One thing I learned about "yoking" animals together is quite illustrative of why I think Jesus used this word picture.  You see, when two animals are yoked together, they pull together. When one grows a little weary, the other takes over the "lead" for a little while.  It is a shared burden.  There is much to be said about not going through life "pulling your own weight" all the time.  In fact, when we finally "yoke up" with the right individuals in life, we find the burden of "pulling" becomes one we not only share, but we actually get through with more grace, ease, and enjoyment.

Did you know there are different types of yokes?  I always pictured either that bar of wood which kind of binds the two animals together just over their neck region, or that oblong piece of leather and wood which fits over their heads and connects to the reins.  Here are some interesting tidbits about the various types of yokes:

- The neck or bow yoke is a wooden cross-piece across the shoulders of the animals with an "oxbow" made of metal which encircles the neck of the animals individually.  As one animal moves forward, pressure is applied to the shoulders of the other.  The pressure is born upon their shoulders, with the load being drug by a beam which extends from the middle of the wooden cross-piece.  The weight is distributed and the pressure is not hard to bear because they are both bearing it together.  Ever find your shoulders just a little tense?  I often realize I am carrying "weight" in ways which makes me tense - I wonder if it is because I am trying to carry that weight myself instead of having it "evenly distributed" so it can be born with ease.

- The head yoke may not be most familiar to many of us, but it is a bar of wood which fits behind and over the horns of the oxen.  It exerts a great deal of pressure on the forehead, so it needs some padding.  In the most literal sense, these animals are using their "heads" to do the work of the day.  I know many of us go about our days trying to figure out how to make things "work" in our lives, musing over things until our heads hurt!  Maybe what we need is to be fit with a yoke which helps us think things through together instead of all on our own!

- The collar harness is a type of "yoke" used in modern wagon gear. It is placed over the head of the horse, moved down just to about the withers and then it is hooked up to all manner of straps and eventually to the wagon's "tongue".  There is a neck yoke bar which is at the end of the "tongue" which connects to the collar.  As the animal is placed into the gear, the weight is again born by what some might think of as the shoulders, just over the top of the horse's front legs.  The placement of the collar harness allows the yoke to be attached, again securing the two animals (and sometimes even more) to bear the burden together.

Yokes aren't meant to hold us captive, but to help us bear burdens and weight beyond our ability in ways we could not do alone.  They are not hard to wear, but they take some getting used to.  If we want to get through life with the best chance of not bearing all the load of life on our own, we might do well to embrace the yoke of God's love and care over our lives instead of stubbornly trying to pull it all on our own! Just sayin!

What a weight

There are millions of ways I get tired - some are from honestly rewarding things like cleaning the house, mowing the lawn, or doing a little spring cleaning of the closets.  Others are kind of silly and really don't seem all that rewarding, like a day spent lounging around the house watching videos and laughing with family.  Both can be equally tiring, but one thing is for sure - we all get tired. As varied as the reasons for our "tiredness" are, there is one thing we all have in common which tires us more than other things - when we carry burdens we were never intended to carry in the first place! Admit it - you do this on occasion - carrying stuff around in your mind and heart which really wasn't your burden to carry - especially alone!  When we do this, we are fatigued beyond our ability to recover alone - so it is best we learn how to lay down what we really don't have any business carrying in the first place!

If you are tired from carrying heavy burdens, come to me and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28 CEV)

George Bernard Shaw once said, "People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them." There is more truth to this statement than we might first want to admit. For some of us, the idea of letting go of that burden just seems so foreign, as though if we did we'd have nothing left to do in life! We used to joke with my mom saying if she had nothing else to worry about she'd worry about having nothing left to worry about.  There are just times in life when we find "letting go" hard because we think we will have nothing left if we do. The truth is - we weren't designed to carry whatever it is we are carrying, so trying to carry it puts us under undo stress!

Brandon Lee was a great martial arts actor who died from an accidental gunshot wound. During his life, he is quoted as making many statements about the martial arts, but one statement really brings to light what I'd like us to consider today:  "You only have the burdens on you that you choose to put there."  I don't know the circumstances in which he spoke these words, but the truth contained within this statement is important for all of us to understand. We "choose" to put the burden into our hearts and minds.  We "choose" to carry what we don't really need to carry - even when we tell someone we do so because we feel "obliged" to do it.  There is no "obligation" to carry burdens - there is an obligation to pray for each other, to support each other, etc.  There is no obligation to carry a burden. In fact, if we look at our scripture carefully, God asks us to bring those very burdens to him - for it is in him we find our rest.

We often think our burdens are maybe too insignificant for him to carry - maybe because we think God only cares about the "huge" or "bigger than life" stuff.  I think we under-estimate God's love for us when we limit him to the "big stuff"!  God wants not only the big stuff, but the ordinary, run-of-the-mill, everyday stuff. Why? He wants us free to enter into the grace he has given us, to be enveloped in his presence, and to have arms free to reach out to others.  When they are preoccupied with burdens (regardless of how small they may be), there is no room to reach out to lift a brother up who has fallen or to bring close one who just needs to be held for a little while.  These are better uses for our hands rather than holding onto what he clearly wants us to let go of in the first place!

Burden bearing is a matter of choice - we choose to keep close those things we cannot really fix in our own ability, or to give them to the one who wants us to find perfect peace and absolute rest. The choice is often overlooked - yet it is this very choice which determines how "massive" the burden has to get before we are going to admit we weren't designed to carry it in the first place. I speak from experience here, my friends, often carrying things God asks me to lay down. The fatigue of carrying things beyond my capacity to "fix" or my capacity of "bearing up under" is overwhelming. When we finally admit we have allowed burdens to be placed upon us which are beyond our bearing - we take the first step in unloading the burden!

We don't want to start the year bearing up under a load of guilt - so admit it and let it go.  We don't want to bear up under a load of anxiety over things we don't hold the keys to control - so ready or not God, here it comes!  We don't want to bear up under anything put there by another - so put it down and be free of the stress of carrying it. Christ beckons us to choose better this year!  Just sayin!