Releasing the Weight
My feet gently pushed against the floor, creating a peaceful rocking motion. I don’t like it when my four-year-old son is sick, but I was soaking up that momma moment of having him sit side-by-side with me in the rocking chair, leaning on me for comfort. Just as I settled into the rhythm of the peaceful sway, he decided he wanted to be in control of making the chair move. With his feet nowhere near being able to reach the floor, he used his whole upper body to try to rock.
His upper body thrusting worked against my gentle push, creating a tension that caused the chair not to rock anymore. We were out of unison. Instead of peaceful movements it was short, jerky motions. I lifted my feet from the floor to allow him to do it on his own, but his way still left us with harsh, jolting movements. No more comforting sway. He became frustrated. This was not the result he wanted.
As I watched my son struggle, I heard God speak. “This is a picture of you when, in hard times, you let anxiety and worry overtake you. You stress over the problem and try to fix things on your own instead of leaning on Me.” Oh, how true that is! When problems arise, stress and worry surround me. Anxiety misleads me into believing I need to figure things out. I lose sleep as my mind works through how to alleviate the problem.
When I try to figure things out on my own, though, I’ve forgotten that I have a Heavenly Father who loves me and is sovereign over everything, even what troubles me. It breaks me out of unison with Him and disrupts the peace and comfort that can only be found by leaning on Him. Figuring things out on my own is the opposite of what His Word says to Do. Psalm 55:22 says “Cast your burden on the Lord [releasing the weight of it] and He will sustain you; He will never allow the [consistently] righteous to be moved (made to slip, fall, or fail)” (AMPC).
I love the description the AMPC version adds: “releasing the weight of it.” What a perfect picture of anxiety, stress and worry as a weight because that’s exactly what they do. They weigh us down. His Word says that if we cast that weight on Him, He will sustain us and not let us be moved (slip, fail, or fall).
If you are carrying the weight of stress, worry and anxiety on you right now, stand up, close your eyes, and picture the cause of it sitting up on your shoulders. Feel the weight of it pressing down on you. Reach up and lift that weight up, then kneel down and lay it at the feet of Jesus. He is standing right there in front of you, ready for you to cast it off onto Him.
Rachel Guest
#EverythingUnderTheSon
