Release The Weight

Release the Weight

Give your burdens to the LORD, and he will take care of you. He will not permit the godly to slip and fall. Psalm 55:22

IF YOU REALLY TOOK THE NEEDS OF THE WORLD upon yourself to pray for them thoughtfully and earnestly, they would overwhelm you—especially when added to the pressures of daily life, with all of its responsibilities and complicated relationships. Even our own to-do lists for this week can feel like a crushing weight. The call to influence the world by prayer and advance God’s Kingdom by faith, personally and corporately, is more than we can handle.

God knows that. He enlarges the capacity of our hearts, but he doesn’t expect us to carry the weight of the world’s problems. He doesn’t even expect us to carry the weight of our own pressing concerns. He offers to take responsibility for the outcomes of all of our issues if we let him—not to remove us from stewarding them, but to lift the burden of them off our shoulders. Jesus promised us deep peace and an easy yoke, and he meant it. He didn’t deliver us from the weight of guilt and shame only to place us under the weight of false responsibility. He promised freedom. And one of the ways he gives it to us is by carrying the load himself.

We have to cooperate with that offer in order to experience its benefits. Biblical instructions to cast our burdens on him (1 Peter 5:7)—literally translated, to throw them off as if we want nothing to do with them—are not just encouragements. If we take them seriously, they aren’t even strong recommendations. They are commands. God knows the only way we can handle life is to trust him with it.

Release the weight of your concerns to God and refuse to pick them back up again. Trust that he is going to do the heavy lifting for you. You will still have to walk through your responsibilities, but the outcomes are on him. The life of faith is too great a responsibility to handle yourself; God-sized compassion is too big for one finite heart. Feel his love and concern but let him handle the pressure of it. The weight of the world is on his shoulders, not yours.

Trust involves letting go and knowing God will catch you.