Letting God Take Our Burdens and Stress

"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." (Matt 11:28-30)

What a killer week! We are going through a quarterly close and we lost a day with the July the 4th holiday weekend. In this case none of our standard deadlines moved while the workload stayed the same. On top of that a slew of work related issues came up which further decreased my free time to do my standard duties by 50%.

My wife had to also deal with my prolonged absences which caused her to have a draining week of caring for my daughter by herself. So for our family it was a tough situation.

The Lord woke me early this morning however because He reminded me that I really need to come apart and be with Him. Jesus Himself set the example for us when He would rise early to be apart from the crowds in quiet while praying to the Father. In truth, these quiet moments are really the best times that I have. All of my days are spent driving, working, meeting, chatting, watching, or even playing. But, how much of that is spending some consistent one to one time with the Lord? Very little.

What the Lord also keyed upon when He woke me was the fact that I have been absorbing a lot of blows during the week. Blows from the sales guys who are trying to book excessive revenues, blows from trying to please my boss, blows from trying to manage my staff, blows from the stress that my wife needs to vent to me, and blows from trying to watch over my child. Yes, the blows come from everywhere and I'm good at absorbing them -- to a point. At some point, the accumulated stress will lead to a breakdown.

That's precisely what happened to me at my previous job. I had tried to take on so much of the stress in my work with my own strength, that I let my faith and relationship to God slip. The consequence was that I had times of stress overload and even volunteered for counseling to talk out some issues.

What I had forgotten however, is that stressful times requires real time with God. Not to specifically do anything, but simply to read a bit of His Word, pray and let Him minister to my soul. At the same time, all the burdens I've absorbed need to be released. No judgement or accusation needs to be retained over what has happened or what was done to me, but if I need to confess my sin, then that is the time to do it. If it wasn't sin that I committed, but maybe sin against me, I need to release it and let God take the burden and judgement instead.

It is so easy to forget sometimes that God is really the one who will judge. It doesn't have to be left to us and so we are free to let go of the things that have happened to us, no matter how harsh. Yes, those who have sinned against us may not get what they deserve here on Earth, but the Lord will be just to judge each sin in the proper way (it can happen here or in eternity).

Lord, please help me to give it all over to You. I'm so grateful that You take the burdens of this life away from us because we don't need to carry all that junk in us all the time. We can learn from our mistakes and have wisdom of the ways and follies of man, but we don't need to always try to get retribution or even with every single thing that happens to us. No, we release it to You to take care of it in its proper way for You see beginning to end. Instead, we just need to follow You. The daily blows become nothing when we have a clear vision of You in front of us at all times. Thank You for being my light and my salvation. In Your healing name of Jesus I pray, Amen.

The Ease of Living Honestly

Better is the poor who walks in his integrity Than one perverse in his ways, though he be rich. (Prov 28:6)

The world seems to be resetting. Although there was great prosperity for almost 30 years from the 1980's through the 2010's, prosperity for prosperity sake seemed to take priority over simple honest living. Now that the party has been halted or even completely extinguished for many Americans, we are left to re-evaluate ourselves and our priorities.

I know that for our family, we have changed a lot during this recession. After having an extended period of being unemployed, we have been humbled, but at the same time we have also strengthened our family bonds and have a deeper reliance on each other and especially upon God. In that way God gave us a great gift that is worth more than any gold in the world.

But even now, we live pretty humbly as a family, but we are lacking in nothing. As I pause and consider the things that we are blessed with, I realize that God has been so very faithful to us. Truly he has known what is best and the ways in which to develop us as well.

We still pray and dream for a house and a bigger family, and along with that we know that it would be nice to have certain things (like a minivan), but as I look upon our lives, I realize that we have no fears or worries about our conduct. We have been able to live honestly, and so even if we have little, there is no drama or worry about it all. There is no weight upon our shoulders.

In the same way, we strive not to push too quickly to move up the ladder. We don't want to cut corners to do something so aggressive that we will run into financial difficulty later.

As I get older and hopefully wiser, I can see that the honest life is indeed best. It may come with little in terms of perks or glamour, but it is the key to a long, happy life.

Lord Jesus, your word is true in every way and when we base our lives upon it and lay down our old ways to You, You lead us upon wise paths. The future is so uncertain, but by Your awesome grace, I know we will get through it all and do so honestly. Please help us to live by Your standard and not get pulled into senseless materialism that can lead to us losing our souls. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.