Unshackled moments ~ November 14, 2018 ~ It's Too Much

I can't take it anymore. I just can't handle this. Can anyone relate? I bet so. We all have those days, maybe even months and years when the heaviness of life overwhelms. It's all just too much. We can't catch our breath before the next gut punch makes things even worse. There are those times when the struggles in life and the impossible circumstances feel like they're beating us beyond what we can hope to manage. We can't figure out how to fix it. We're no longer waiting for the next shoe to drop because we're too busy dodging a full out shoe thunderstorm. We run around knowing the sky is falling, trying to control and manage the uncontrollable, but we can't seem to catch a break. Maybe, like me, in times like these prayer becomes something like, "Lord, how am I supposed to handle this?"

The answer, if we can get still enough to hear it, is that we are not supposed to handle it. We were never intended to be able to control, carry or correct the problems of life. The struggles and difficulties of life are the result of broken relationship with our Creator. It's called a curse, because that's what it feels like. It's not a curse because God is mad. It's not a curse because He's getting even with us for Adam's sin, our sin, the rebellion of creation or whatever else it may seem like. It's a curse because it is the opposite of the blessing that life was intended to be. It's not punishment though. It's the natural result of cause and effect. If you're in a shelter while it's raining and you step outside, you get wet. If the light is turned off, the room gets dark.


The curse was not God saying because  you messed up, I'm mad and I'm going to make bad things happen. The curse is God saying because the world has moved out of my shelter, it is no longer safe from storms. Because the light of relationship has been turned off, there will be darkness. But was God angry? No. Was He sitting back saying now they'll get what they deserve for rejecting me? No. From before the choices were made that plunged the wold into darkness, before the choices were made by us and others that made our lives so difficult, He said I am putting into motion a plan to make things right. I will make a way for you all, for every single person who wants it, to come back to the shelter and experience the light of My Love.

We were never intended to handle this. We were never intended to manage the chaos of the curse. The problem is that we keep trying to. The answer is to accept the work that has been done and trust the One who is making things right. The problems will not all go away. Life will still be hard at times, and the rain will fall. The perfection of the plan will not be totally revealed on this side of eternity. But the good news is that we don't have to carry the weight of it. We can run to Daddy. He will carry it for us. And we can trust in the truth that He cares for us and will use even the hardships caused by the curse to make us more like Him, to bring us into deeper relationship with Him, to show His love, power and provision to us and others. We can know that the difficulties in life are temporary and the blessings of relationship with Jesus are eternal.When we see Him as He is and know Him better than we now know ourselves, we will know that whatever short difficulties we had to endure in this lifetime to get there were worth it. We will see that even in the times when the enemy surrounded and tormented us we were never alone and the treasure of our souls, the essence of who we are and what matters most on the eternal scale of things was never once in jeopardy once we became His children through the work of Christ. Don't allow the difficulties of life to deceive you into thinking that God doesn't care. He does. Let them instead be what drives us deeper into relationship and teaches us to stop trying to carry the impossible weight of life but rather rely more and more on Him.


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