Receiving Jesus in your life will be hands down the single most important decision you make in your life. It is something that should and will change everything about you, if you allow it. It is THE one relationship that you will gain the most from for as long as you live. And it is something that will continue to grow you and change you throughout your life. But unfortunately there are a lot of people who receive Jesus, experience a change, but never really experience ALL that Jesus has for them. Why does this happen? And more importantly what can we do to help prevent this?
There are 2 things in a Christians life that are very important, yet sometimes we get so far in our walk with Jesus and we either forget to fully do these or we just stop doing them as much as we used to. One of those is casting our cares upon God. Psalms 55:22 says "Cast your burden on the Lord, and He shall sustain you; He shall never permit the righteous to be moved." God invites us to take our cares to Him. He invites us to not walk around in life dragging around the things that ARE going to weigh us down. But how often do we really do that. Oh, we do it when we first come to God. It is that feeling of freedom when you accept His gift. It is that feeling that made you feel lighter when you walked away after accepting Him than you did when out cried out to Him. If you have ever had a true life changing experience with God then I am sure you know what I mean. Sometimes it's even hard to put words to. You came to him with all this sin, all this shame, all this baggage...everything the world and life ever piled on you. And you laid it down at His feet and said "no more". You cried and said I don't want to do this my way anymore and I don't want to carry this stuff around...please take it from me today. Obviously I am paraphrasing, but I know that is what it was like for me and so many others I have ever talked to about coming to God. But then something happens after we have been walking with the Lord for a while. We start trying to carry stuff again. Sometimes old stuff that creeps back up on us, and sometimes new stuff that has come into our life after getting saved. But nonetheless, we find that there is more stuff. Why? And what should we do? Well, we should do it all over again....and again...and again. God didn't invite us to cast our burdens on Him one time, He invited us to constantly do it. Daily...even hourly if that is what it takes some days. And once you do, He doesn't want to go back and try to pick it all back up again. I've made the statement several times that sometimes we drag all of our "junk" to the alter and say "take this from me God", and then we drag most of it back to our seat with us. Insecurity, pain/hurt (emotional and physical), scars, confusion, disfunction and even our sins. Sometimes we either drag it all to Him and only lay down some of it, or we just drag the things to Him that "we think" He can or will help us with, and we keep the rest to deal with on our own. No...no....no...God wants us to give it ALL to Him. And for more than one reason. One is because He LOVES us and wants us to walk in freedom from those things. But two is because He wants to build up our faith in Him. When we truly lay things down at His feet and release them to Him we will experience healing and freedom that we didn't think was possible, and it will build up our faith in Him.
Because I love fitness, I often see things in training that remind me of our walk with God. And today as God was giving me these words I saw in my mind the way some runners train. Not sure if you have ever witnessed this or not, but some runners will either run pulling a weighted sled behind them, or they use a resistance parachute to create a lot of drag while they run. The reason for both of these things is because these devices will make it very hard for them to run during practice, and then once removed, they will be able to run much, much faster. Today I feel like God is saying that so many of us have been trying to run while we pull all that weight and resistance behind us...from out past, and even from the present. He is saying let me cut you lose from that and show you what running free really feels like. Give those burdens to Me and see how much lighter you will feel...emotionally, spiritually and even physically.
I stated earlier that there are 2 things in a Christian's life that are very important. However, since this blog ended up longer than I intended, I will write about the 2nd thing tomorrow.
God, Thank You that Your word promises us that we don't have to do life alone. That we don't have to carry everything on our own. Not only do you not want us to carry it all, but You ask us to give it to You. That is amazing love. Holy Spirit help us to be strong enough and brave enough to lay down our burdens and walk away from them. Show us what walking in true freedom feels like today....then help us to use our own lives to show others. In Jesus name, Amen
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