Monday, January 23, 2012

What To Do With Our Burdens

Casting for fish. Bing
“Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty had of God,

that He may exalt you in due time,

casting all your cares upon Him, for He cares for you.”

1 Peter 5:6-7 (NKJV)





When we have a burden, a concern, or a worry, we have certain options we can pursue. We can fret and stew about it; that can lead us to getting physically sick or we can give it to God and let Him take care of our need.

God allows us the choice. When we choose to ‘stuff’ our problems, we eventually get a lot of issues on our hearts. The modern psychologists refer to this as having a lot of ‘baggage.’ When I first heard this term, I thought of a person carrying a full suitcase on his or her back. This imaginary person, bent from the waist, couldn’t move with ease. That person carried the weight of all his misdeeds and hurts in such a way he couldn’t see the road ahead.

Our scripture today tells us when we humble ourselves before God, He will lift us up. Our being free of the burden might not come as soon as we want. It comes ‘in due time’, when God chooses to intervene and remove that concern from our hearts.

Casting all your cares, I like this phrase. Being married to a man who used to fish, I get a mental image of a person stretching his or her arm over their head and letting the reel release the line as far away as possible. In the spiritual sense, I hear Peter telling his readers to hurl those woes onto the Lord God and not pick them back up again.

While it is sometimes difficult to leave our requests with Jesus, when we learn to do this we grow in our faith.

5 comments:

  1. I love the image of casting, or throwing all the weight of my cares on Jesus' back. He can handle them; I can't.

    Love you, friend,
    Jen

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  2. Jeanette:
    Thank you for your thought. I have friends who have found it freeing to realize they can't do things without God's help.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. We do learn much by doing this, don't we? Thanks for the reminder!

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  5. Karen:
    Thank you for your thought. I find myself needing to cast things out of my mind on a regular basis.

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I would be honored to hear what you think about this.

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