Day Twenty-Three
“Walking Light”
Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.
Psalm 55:22
Many of you are walking heavy-laden and weighed down with excessive burdens. Instead of finding relief during this forty-day challenge, you are carrying more pressure. This is a great verse for us today. The challenge today is to walk light without added weight and pressure to our lives. I want to remind you of something - the removal of your burden or the moving of your mountain depends on God. All He needs from you is trust.
What is weighing you down? The word “burden” in this verse can also be translated as what is given you by lot or Providence. Isn’t that interesting? There are burdens that God has intended for us or allotted to us but He doesn’t intend for us to shoulder the load. This doesn’t appear to make sense. If God doesn’t want us to shoulder the load why would He give us or allot to us burdens in the first place? Perhaps it is to make us depend on Him.
We are fiercely independent people. We often try to carry the load ourselves, whether it is dealing with grief, finances, family matters, stress from work, poor choices made by others, and so forth. Could God being allowing trials in our life just so we will have to turn to Him for help? How often do we shoulder the load ourselves, producing all manner of maladies in the physical body such as anxiety, stress, ulcers, and heart disease?
If we could learn to roll every burden, every stress, every trial on to His sovereign, broad and massive shoulders we could walk light and live with tranquility of soul. That is the point of Philippians 4:6-7 - we bring our burdens to God no matter how weighty and cumbersome they are and in exchange He gives us peace of mind and heart.
God also sustains us during these times of trial. That means He supports us, maintains our emotional and spiritual state, nourishes us and gives us endurance. Let me illustrate this point in a personal way. It was only this past Tuesday that I became burdened about this forty-day challenge. Our church has been praying about buying that specific piece of land for a couple of months now. We have agreed that the Lord wanted us to have it but did not know what the next step was to be. Most of the ideas for this “40 Days to Trust and Obey” Challenge have been rattling around in my head for weeks, but this week I felt God call me to this task. I believe that He “allotted” for me to write this book and lead our church in this challenge. But here is the catch - that has meant that I had to get this material written, edited, printed and bound in about ten days.
When I say that God has called me to this writing assignment, it has been consuming. Every other project has taken a back seat to this one. For the better part of the last four days I have locked myself away in this office to write this book. I wrote from 9:00 a.m. until 6:45 p.m. two days ago except for time off to eat lunch. I was awakened at 3:30 a.m. this morning and have been writing since about 4:30 a.m. Though God has allotted this assignment to me I have rolled it right back to Him asking for strength to complete the task as well as for anointing and inspiration to capture His heart and what He wants to say to His people. Sometimes have worried that I have been pushing myself too hard these past few days but God is the one calling me to this project and is giving me holy ambition to complete the task. Not finishing is not an option because this is the will of God for me. I am writing this because it is part of His call on my life. At this point I still have some seventeen more chapters to go and less than a week to complete the whole process.
God is sustaining me with a need for less sleep at this time and with people who are coming to my aid such as a friend who is editing this material as fast as I am getting it to her. I have another couple who have offered to print and bind the copies themselves in order to save the church money. This has been a group calling, and it is fascinating to watch all of it unfold.
I feel the weight of this assignment but have an inner calm in my heart and a tranquility of the soul. I know that what God calls me to do He will enable me to do as well. Now, what is it that God has allotted to you? What burden has He sent your way, desiring that you would turn it back to Him and walk light and easy in this world, trusting Him with the burden? Do we trust Him enough to remove the weight from our shoulders and do we trust Him enough to sustain us? I hope by this time the answer is yes in both cases.
Steps to Trust and Obey:
What burdens or assignments has God allotted to you? What are you doing with those burdens or assignments?
In what ways is God sustaining you in this time?
What things do you need to roll off your spiritual shoulders today? Why not take some time to do just that right now?
What do you sense the Lord speaking to you now? What steps of obedience do you feel Him leading you to take?
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