Drop the Bags: A Lesson in Ceasing from Striving
/I snapped this photo of baby girl over the weekend. I had to chuckle at how she was struggling to hold that bag with her phone to her ear. Where did she learn such things?
Today, I was looking through my phone and came across this picture. And I immediately knew where she got this from. Me. Just this morning, I'd weighed myself down with multiple bags while I juggled a cup of coffee and my keys--all so I wouldn't have to make numerous trips to the car.
Needless to say, I'm embarrassed....because if this is how I look, then I need to slow down. And stop it. This is not just how I look on the outside, this is how I feel on the inside too. Burdened. Bogged down. Harried and hurried.
"Cease striving and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10a
In a season where I think I need to do more and be more, God is saying let go, drop your hands and relax. I want to argue that faith without works is dead so I must give God something to work with to keep it moving.
"Blessed be the Lord, who daily bears our burden, the God who is our salvation. Selah."
God is daily bearing my burden. Your burden too. Every single day, I can hand the bags over to Him instead of being a bumbling, stumbling mess. He didn't even design us to live that way. We are to walk freely in faith.
I'm thinking about a time when I desired a job before our first son was born. I applied for jobs left and right. I even applied for jobs well beneath my pay scale and outside of my experience. Even with all that, I wasn't landing a job. By the time, my son was born, I'd settled into being a stay-at-home mom. I wasn't stressed and constantly working myself up over a job.
When our son was 2, a former boss called me out of the blue and said she referred me for a job. The pay was well above what I would have ever asked for and the work was right up my alley. It came at a perfect time. I'd taken my hands off of the situation and let God put His hand on it. Only then, was He able to do something with it. The blessing literally came knocking on my door.
I'm feeling like I need to do that again. Take my hands completely off and release things into God's competent care. Sometimes instead of working and walking in faith, we simply need to wait in faith.
I grew up the oldest child of two so taking responsibility was drilled into me. It comes naturally. You step up. You watch over it. You make sure nothing bad happens. Mixing that oldest child syndrome with faith is not a good combination.
I'm going to list out all the troubles I need to pile on God's shoulders. Then I'm going to focus on stopping the striving and simply chilling in God.