This post was originally written for a website called Sweet Jesus Ministries that I am a monthly contributor for. I hope you are blessed and encouraged to read this during your own season of transition.
But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details!
There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.
Luke 10:41-42
So here I sit convicted… again.
Not of some great sin, or something I said or did. More like
something I didn’t do. When we moved into this much bigger house in
North Carolina from Texas, we bought the extra square footage for a
reason. I had always hoped to be a hostess. A hostess for my friends and
family when they came to visit me and a hostess for bible studies,
ladies groups, or my friend’s kids. I wanted to be the house that
everyone went to. The house that was warm and welcoming to anyone at
anytime.
But the extra square footage meant extra cleaning. The 1970’s house
didn’t have all the ugly wallpaper off yet. The brass fixtures were
still everywhere you looked. The yard still needed help from someone
with a much greener thumb than I had. Sure we had done a lot to the
house since we moved in, all new floors, repainted several of the rooms
downstairs and bought new furniture. But I felt like it wasn’t enough. I
was afraid of being judged on the rooms still left to be remodeled and
they would stick in their minds greater than the rooms that had been
finished.
"Are you
tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me.
Get away with me
and you’ll recover your life.
I’ll show you how to take a real rest.
Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it.
Learn the unforced
rhythms of grace.
I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep
company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly."
Matthew 11:28-30 (MSG)
Some of you may have heard this verse before but perhaps not in this version. You may be more familiar with:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (NIV)
How many times have we said "Lord, this feels way more than I can bear! You said you wouldn't do this to me." Well, I believe I have found the reason why we truly experience that at times life is more than we can bear.
Because we are carrying too much...we need to lighten the load.
If you are carrying the emotional weight of your hormonal teenager adjusting to middle school, you're carrying too much. If you are carrying the weight of your finances for the whole family and it is causing you to endure chronic financial stress, you're carrying too much. If you are carrying the burden of an elderly parent that cannot care for themselves alone, you are carrying too much. If you are pulled in the middle of a friendship that is unraveling at the seams feeling like you're the link holding it together, you're carrying too much. If you feel the weight of exhaustion that comes from an overloaded schedule, you're carrying too much.
Do you feel it? It is heavy. It consumes our thoughts. It weighs us down spiritually, emotionally, physically...it is too much! You need to lighten the load.
How do we do that? By giving it to God.
When you pray about something, you are leaving it in God's hands. If you notice the weight of the stress burdening you like a ton of bricks pushing you into the floor, it's because you picked it back up.
That's right, you waltzed back into the throne room, picked up that situation that you had you laid down at his feet and said "I've got this God". Only you realized that much later that afternoon, you picked up way more than you could carry and you feel tired, burnt out, stressed out and at your wit's end.
Put it back! That is the great thing about the verse above. We need to learn God's "unforced rhythms of grace". What does that mean? Well imagine our life as a song. Every song has a beat or a rhythm that is slow or fast or just right. Now let's unpack grace. Grace is undeserved favor that rests on us as believers. The Lord knows this life is heavy and the rhythm of our life can get sped up by circumstances beyond our control and within our control. It pounds on our hearts and minds and becomes a burden to keep up with, if we let it.
But when we walk in God's undeserved favor, His open arms waiting to carry our burdens for us, then we are beginning to understand his "rhythm of grace". We begin to realize that when life is more than we can handle it is because we weren't meant to carry it alone, we were meant to share it with God. We were meant to lay it down before his throne and let Him work it out on our behalf.
Here is the best part of our loving God. This rhythm of grace He wants us to walk in is unforced. Just as a relationship with Him is. We don't have to accept the gift of this grace. We can continue to operate in our own strength and in our own power and allow the weight of our problems to crush us.
Or, we can operate in the "unforced rhythms of grace" and choose the lighter road. We can even remind ourselves several times throughout the day, week or month to put that problem, that situation, that person back down at God's feet. We will have several times throughout the day where we are tempted to pick those burdens back up, but where grace comes in is remembering that God doesn't want us to carry that alone. It's too big, it's too heavy. He wants us to walk in rest that God has got this situation under control. He wants us to trust that it will be resolved. He wants us to walk our everyday lives in freedom. Freedom from being bound to the heavy yokes that will ultimately trap us into the bondage of stress that can cause anxiety, depression, or despair. We have the grace to put it back down when we see ourselves picking it back up.
Get away with me
and you’ll recover your life...Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it.
Oh those words are soothing to my soul. Let's recover our lives and live it to the promised abundant fullness! Let's walk with God and talk with Him. Let's cooperate with Him. Here is the best part- in the resting and trusting- we'll get a front row seat on howHe will come through in our problem.
What are you carrying that feels too heavy? Have you laid it down in the throne room for God to take care of it?
Because When You Speak, When You Move.
When You Do What Only You Can Do
It Changes Us, It Changes What We See And What We Seek
When You Come In The Room
When You Do What Only You Can Do
It Changes Us, It Changes What We See And What We Seek
These are the lyrics to a beautiful song, "Spirit of the Living God", by Vertical Church Band that can help you in your quiet time today to lay it ALL down.
You did it! You took that large leap of faith and went for it. You know this is something God has always called you to do and now you have positioned yourself to embrace it fully. Or have you?... Why do you feel like your drowning and barely keeping your head above water? So much time and sacrifice went into this decision and you know that this was God's will for your life, but why does it feel like it's not?
Have you ever been there before? You finally start writing that book, you take that job, you start that business, or you move to that new city, but...it's not what you expected. In fact it's hard. You already want to give up. This isn't how you imagined it would be. You have stepped so far out of your comfort zone with the mountain of uncertainty before you that you are overwhelmed and you crave for the comfort of everything familiar. You want to go back to that routine you had crafted so perfectly, you wanna go where everyone knows your name, you want to retreat from the difficult task for fear you might mess it up.
I can't help but wonder if Ruth from the Bible was probably there. To get up and leave her pagan homeland of Moab and go with her embittered mother in law to Bethlehem- a place where they worship the living God-has got to be a bit of a daunting task for Ruth. We all know her from her bold proclamations of faith she spouted in chapter oneto Naomi in verses 16 and 17:
"But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God.Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.”
I have always imagined her standing before her mother in law speaking with confidence and boldness. But was she uttering those words at first with her lips trembling and tears streaming down her face? Did she have an encounter with Naomi's God that revealed to her she should continue on with Naomi? Did she know there was nothing left for her behind in Moab or perhaps a cruel family that couldn't care less if she came back? Despite the reason, she pressed on and stated to Naomi a courageous conviction that might have been simmering in her heart for a while now. She tells Naomi she is determined to go, states her faith in God (turning her back on her pagan lifestyle) and then she does something incredible... she removes her safety-net.
See up until this point she had one foot in Moab and one foot in Bethlehem. Holding on to what she knows and what she is comfortable with. Perhaps she keeps looking back and estimating how far she may have to travel back by herself if she decides to go back like her sister in law Orpah did.
After she makes these seven vows to Naomi, what she is inherently doing is taking her foot out of Moab and placing it next to the other so she can proceed forward in full faith and confidence that what is ahead of her is greater than what she left behind.
"May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me"
Here is where she removes that safety-net. Hereis where the vows turn from Naomi but to God. She is saying if "I don't do these things whole-heartedly and follow the will God has planned for me, then I deserve to get what's coming to me." The wrath of God in the early bible days is something I would never want to test.
Apart of obedience that no one ever thinks about is SURRENDER. Fully surrendering our agendas, our families, our finances, our hearts and our emotions is never calculated when we say our yes to God. We have a tendency to hold tightly to the things that we know we can control when we are in a season of transition.
Let go, surrender, don't get in your own way. Pick up both feet and move them in the same direction- FORWARD. You can't go anywhere if you have one foot in God's will and one foot in your comfort zone.
When Ruth came to a place of full surrender, she was able to etch her name into the lineage of Jesus Christ! If God can use a widowed pagan Moabitess to accomplish His will, He can use me and you. If we let go, things greater than we could have ever imagined may lying before us.
What do you need to surrender today to fully embrace God's will for your life?
This week we focus on an a very important part of our armor- The Robe of Love. You don't hear about this piece in the Ephesians 6 verses, but it is binding and unifies all the pieces better than anything else!
Ladies, we have covered all the pieces of our armor. Now it's time to dig into our only weapon, but the only one we will ever need- The Sword of the Spirit!
So many times life puts us in positions where we ask God to give us peace, but we already have it! It is a fruit of the Holy Spirit! We just need to learn to walk in it!
We are now on our second piece of the armor- The Belt of Truth! Let's prepare to strap on our belts as we ride this roller coaster called life! We continue our journey through Ephesians 6 with the Week three video and PDF.
I am so excited to finally kick off the Arm Yourself Online Bible Study! Pull up a chair, a cup of coffee (or hot cocoa) and let's dig in to Ephesians 6 and learn to put on God's armor together!
This is the first video of the 9 week study and you can print out the link below that has a pdf that you can take notes on and follow along.
Homework this week: Read chapter one this week in Arm Yourself: Equipping Ourselves with the Armor of God.
Don't forget to join us at the Arm Yourself Online Bible Study facebook group for more info, community and accountability! Here is the link for that also: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1696570913889883/
If there are any issues at all with these links, don't hesitate to contact me at michellemoore.heartssong@gmail.com.
