Lay It Down
1 Peter 5:7 Amplified Bible (AMP)
7 Casting the whole of your care [all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, once and for all] on Him, for He cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully.
Ephesians 4:21-25 Amplified Bible (AMP)
21 Assuming that you have really heard Him and been taught by Him, as [all] Truth is in Jesus [embodied and personified in Him], 22 Strip yourselves of your former nature [put off and discard your old unrenewed self] which characterized your previous manner of life and becomes corrupt through lusts and desires that spring from delusion; 23 And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind [having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude], 24 And put on the new nature (the regenerate self) created in God’s image, [Godlike] in true righteousness and holiness. 25 Therefore, rejecting all falsity and being done now with it, let everyone express the truth with his neighbor, for we are all parts of one body and members one of another.
One of my Sistafriends has a purse that I love, I admired it one day and it has become our running joke whenever we see one another and I am always teasing her telling her I am waiting for her to bless me with this purse. You see she confided in me one day that this purse hurts her shoulder, and from that moment I began to tease her and tell her God was trying to tell her to lay her weight down, and give the purse to me. No matter how bad the purse hurts her she refuses to give it away or even stop using it. She has lightening its content and switches shoulders, but still she holds on to this purse, all the while knowing it causes her discomfort. She will not lay this purse down.
Although, my interaction with her is in jest and love as we often do with one another about many subjects, the truth is we do this with so many things in life and especially as it concerns what God is asking us to lay down, give up, put away or stop using or doing some things that we have continued to hang on to. Have you ever been shopping and had to carry all your purchases around all day long, and by the time you got home all you could think about was laying them all down, and the joy of discovering what we had purchased was gone. I know while I was in the Air Force, I was in a mobile unit that required us to carry specific types of bags that had uniforms and equipment in them, those bags were heavy and weighty and they were uncomfortable to carry for long periods of time. They altered our ability to get where we were going expeditiously and they caused us to have to alter the way we did business. Isn’t that many of us? We are carrying issues, problems, behaviors, attitudes, lies and deceptions, betrayals, habits, mindsets and lifestyles that are weighting us down, causing us to stumble, and even fall. Things that are causing us to alter the way of Christ in our lives to accommodate them; some of these things are hurting us and others, keeping us from gaining the blessings and favor of God in our lives but yet we know that it is causing us drama, pain and to be in a place where we are not in the will of God or it is causing us to be so stressed out we cannot even recognize the will of God, but yet we refuse to lay it down, give it up, or stop, look and listen to the voice of God that is begging us to come to Him so that He can heal us and give us rest.
Why do we refuse to lay things down, give them up or put them away? Is it because they look good on us? My daughter often says beauty is pain, is the pain that we are going through worth the beauty that we perceive we have? Is it because it satisfies the flesh? We do realize that this flesh is temporary and that if we continue to satisfy it we are going to have a satisfied flesh and a dissatisfied spirit and an even more dissatisfied God. Is it because we are afraid to do something different, are we afraid if we lay it down, that we will become visible, vulnerable and that someone can take advantage of us? Well, you know what love is a chance, God loved us and we disappointed Him, when we disappointed Him we were exposed, and vulnerable but yet He did not destroy us He covered us and developed a plan to get us back to Him. Is our inability because we don’t know how to let go or lay it down? Yes you do, open your hand, heart, mind and let it go. Put it on the alter, nail it there, if you have to write it down burn the paper, change your phone number, change you r address, or in some cases just changing your mind will be enough.
Many of us have things that we have been carrying around that we vowed no one would find out about, but guess what God already knows and every eye that we perceive is closed is not sleep to what is going on within us. Others are burdened down with a backpack of pain that they need to get rid of, forgive, give it to God and ask Him to make it a painless recollection, not a painful reminder. We are carrying around things and people we cannot change and many of us are hunched over in pain and yet we refuse to do anything different than what we have been doing. We will never truly be free until we lay it down, give it up, put it away and cast if off. Sometimes we have to face that we have to give up how we perceive things should be done to get what needs to be done in our lives and for change to come. You cannot get new results doing it the old way! Lay it down!
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