August 20, 2019

Good Morning Fellow Travelers,

Read: 1 Peter 1:3-12

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” (Mat 11:28-30)

God wants to carry our burdens. He calls us to cast all our cares upon him, for he cares for us. 1 Peter1:7. Jesus gave a beautiful invitation in Matthew 11:28-30. Here he offers to give rest to those who labor and are heavily burdened.

Why is it so difficult to cast our burdens on him? Faith and trust want to be our friends, but we rather cling to those old friends named doubt and distrust. When care controls us, then the word of God is choked and we become unfruitful. The level of our involvement in the world is usually directly in line with the cares that it brings.

We also lose our vision and readiness for eternity when care rules our lives. Care controls when pride rules. Pride demands control and refuses to turn anything over. We then go on, bearing burdens too heavy for us.

We like to borrow trouble from tomorrow. Here is a quote from D.O. Teasely’s book entitled, Ray of Hope. “The ‘maybes’ and the ‘might have beens’: those things which will never come to pass and those things which never were, cause more troubles than realities. Retain no thought of trouble from yesterday that will dim your hope today. Borrow no gloomy vision for tomorrow, for tomorrow will have trouble enough for its own.

“It is trouble enough to be troubled when trouble comes. If your powers of anticipation are so great that you can taste the bitterness of trouble yet to come, make that power of anticipation, instead of a curse, a blessing by tasting of the sweets yet to come.”

Cast your cares on the heavenly Father.

~~ James Baer