It is impossible to live in this world and not experience situations that burden us. We carry these burdens around with us everywhere we go. We think about them both night and day, and we talk about them to anyone who will listen. We try to solve them on our own, often in vain. There are times when we carry our burdens with us for years. They weigh us down, and they can impact every aspect of our lives. We live, eat, and breathe our burdens on a daily basis. Sometimes they become such an enormous part of who we are that we do not want to let them go. We sometimes even mistakenly allow our burdens to define who we are.

People will advise us to lay our burdens down. We have held on to these burdens so long that it actually makes us mad when this happens. We think that if we surrender our burdens that we are giving up and the situation will never be resolved. Often we take our burdens to God through prayer. We spend countless hours on our knees asking God to move on our behalf. We are doing what God wants us to do when we take our burdens to Him. However, how many times do we pick the burdens back up and take them with us after we pray? God wants us to bring our burdens to Him and leave them with Him. We are not supposed to pick them up and take them with us.

Believe me, I know how difficult this is, but in order to have peace in our lives, we have to leave our burdens with God. This does not mean that we will not think about our burdens or that they will vanish from our lives, but we have to trust that God can resolve our problems and carry our burdens for us. We have to allow Him to resolve our problems in His own way and in His time. That is also a very difficult thing to do because we want our problems solved instantly. After all, He is God and we know that He can do that, but we would be missing out on the lessons that we need to learn if He did. He wants to carry our burdens for us, but He wants us to learn from the experience. He wants to build our faith, to teach us to wait on Him, to trust Him, and to believe that He is in control.

So, if you are carrying burdens around with you, stop. The weight of those burdens is keeping you from living the life that God wants you to live. You are missing out on the blessings that God has given you. You are allowing the burdens to steal your peace and your time. We have to give our burdens to God. We have to leave them in His capable hands and have faith that He will resolve them in His time. When we truly leave our burdens with God, the sense of peace that surrounds us will be incomprehensible and PEACE MATTERS.

~Dan~