No More!

Go with me on this thought if you would. Imagine waking up each day and before you even take a step out of bed you begin to pick up heavy weights that have ropes tied to them and hang them around your neck. And now you start your day with all of this heaviness on you. Doesn't make a lot of sense does it? But isn't this what a lot of us do emotionally and mentally every single day of our lives?
One of the things God wants to do for us as we start a relationship with Him is remove the things from our lives that weigh us down. And by that I don't mean He wants to come along and take them out of our lives, I mean He wants us to lay them at His feet and let Him do what only He can so they don't have the impact on us that they one did, before we walked with Him. God cares about our emotional and mental well being. He cares about the things that wear us down, cause us sadness, distress, depression, grief, anxiety, mental and/or emotional pain and most of all, the things that prevent Him from having full access to our hearts. God is the master at tearing down the walls that we build up around ourselves because of the things that happen to us in life. He doesn't want us to build up defense mechanisms because when we do He has to get through and around them too.
God IS love, and therefore He doesn't come after us with anything but love. And when we have been damaged by the things that life throws at us His love can feel "strange" to us. And the enemy will try very hard to torment us and convince us we don't deserve His love. Satan will try get us to feel unworthy and try to get us to hide our faces from God, just like He did with Adam and Eve. However, God comes along and says to us "Do not hide in shame from me. Do not carry things you were not meant to carry. Do not let sin run and rule your life. Do not let the things that other people do affect you. Let me affect you, and then the good that comes out of you because of that will affect others".
The things we "choose" to carry we sometimes forget that we are choosing to carry them. We feel like we "have to" carry them. But when you feel that way, I invite you to stop and think this thought. "Did Jesus Christ really die so that I would still feel this way, or did he suffer and die and rise again to set me free from this?" He did die to set you free....and there is no limit to what that word "free" represents. He wants to set you free from anything that does not come from Him, period! In Matthew 11:28-30 Jesus Himself said these words "Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light". In case you don't know, a yoke is the piece they hang around an animals neck so they can hook farm equipment to it to be pulled, like a heavy plow. So when Jesus says "take my yoke" He literally is saying "let me carry your burdens and you carry what I have for you. That will be much easier." So now go back to the thought I opened with, and now imagine waking up each day and taking all those weights and handing them to Jesus instead of hanging them around your neck. Then, in their place, He gives you things like peace, joy, love, grace and mercy to hang around yours. This is figuratively and literally what He wants to do for you each and every day of your life.
Galatians 5:1 says "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery". The enemy would love nothing more than to make you a slave to anything and everything he can. A slave to sin, to bad emotions, to mental states like depression....but Christ says "NO MORE!". I died to set you free, so stand firm and walk in your freedom! Today, I invite you to ask God to help you walk IN that freedom and walk OUT of anything He never intended for you.
God, thank You for the freedom we find in You. Thank You that You are the answer to anything we face. Please give us the wisdom to turn to you and lay things at your feet instead of trying to carry them or deal with them on our own. Holy Spirit, be the voice in our lives that guides down paths that lead to freedom and not paths the repeat the hardships that you desire for us to escape from. And let the freedom we walk in be seen by others so they too will trust in You. In Jesus name, Amen