Rest from Our Burdens

There is a new book added to my Reading List on the right side of the screen here. The book is titled Burden Bearers: Who's Carrying Your Load? Paul Chappell is a pastor and the author of this book that I have not quite finished reading - still working on it.

I found this book when I felt led to do a Google search on "burden bearers" just to see if anyone had already written something on the subject, as I know quite a few people who carry burdens for others, myself included, and I wanted to know more about the subject. In my case, I needed to know specifically how to deal with the very heavy burdens I was carrying - how to shift their weight in order to carry them more easily or how to release them altogether. All I knew was that I could no longer carry them all. It had become too much. I slept very little each night with the worries of each burden and then could barely face each day. It seemed as though my only solution was to run away and hide so that no one could burden me any further (forgetting that I was the one who had taken the burdens upon myself in the first place, no one had forced me into anything, that's just the kind of person I am: caring and compassionate and...well...it seemed that if I were going to hide, it might need to be from myself!)

Mind you, I have been a born-again believer for more than 40 years now and I know Scripture (how could I not after studying the bible for the best part of that 40 years?)  I know, for example, that Jesus said:

"Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly of heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30)

And then there is this one which I used so often just to help me drift off to sleep each night after a long day of burden-bearing, it's just that I couldn't stay asleep:

"The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures, He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul...I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me..." (Psalm 23: 1-4a)

These are words my mind kept telling my heart, it's just that my heart was unable to apply that which it was hearing. At some point, I had become so burdened that I didn't function as well as I once had. It was as though a sort of paralysis had taken hold of me and I became unable to move, or even to think clearly. You would think paralysis would be a "rest" of some sort, but it isn't - it's just a more intense struggle to do what you know you can no longer do - to move - and carry burdens!

Then my Google search led me to Paul Chappell's book which, by the way, is such an easy read! Each chapter is prefaced by an allegorical example, similar to the way The Pilgrim's Progress was written. Each preface is a continuation of a tale that happens primarily between two main characters, Carrier and Burden Bearer, although they meet other characters along The Way.  It is difficult to know whether I learned more from the allegorical parts or from the pastoral teaching parts that followed, as they were both excellently written, but there was no doubt about it: I was Carrier, who was also a born-again believer, carrying a backpack filled with burdens.

So, have I found a practical application of the message contained in Paul Chappell's book to my own life? Have I truly found the rest and restoration that are promised to me in the two scriptures above?

Honestly, probably not quite yet. After all, I haven't even finished the book...

...but as I read, I sense a slight lessening, barely perceptible, of the ever-present weight on my heart and a stirring of truths long buried under grief's pain. For example, there was a time when I clearly heard the Lord speak to me through a dream, but His words were also lost in my suffering. Now, I recall the words spoken, and I weep for having doubted Him, for having lost my way. And even as I weep, I understand once again that a release, and rest, are waiting for me, here, in the weeping. 

God's Truth Versus Man's Imagination

During an extended period of grieving, I allowed work, and other distractions, to keep me away from this blog. More than two years later, with grief reduced to only an occasional heart-searing pain of regret and remorse, work came to an end as well, although distractions never end.

Still, I still found myself unable (or unwilling?) to take up my blogging "pen" until this week when I received an anonymous comment on an older post about Babylon. As I reread the Babylon post, some words I had written about man's imagination being evil caught my attention.

Clearly, all that man can imagine is not evil.

After all, imagination (our "mind's eye" as it is sometimes called) allows us to "see" ourselves in the place of Peter as he wept bitterly upon realizing that he had three times denied any association with Jesus whom he had claimed to love. ["...Lord you know all things, you know that I love you..." John 21:17; "And Peter wept bitterly" Luke 22:62]

This same imagination begs an answer from us individually to the question: Am I capable of denying Jesus as Peter did?

The answer is always: yes.  We humans whom God came to save are absolutely capable of denying Jesus, of denying God, for they are One and the same. ["...he who has seen me has seen the Father..." John 14:9; "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God, and the Word was with God." John 1:1]

We are completely capable of turning away from the Hand that has reached out, not to harm us, but to save us. ["For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future." Jeremiah 29:11]

This same imagination can put us in the place of the prodigal son as he returned home laden with the weight of his former rebellion against his Father, only to find the Father rejoicing in his son's return, rather than finding himself being accused and punished as he knew he deserved. ["For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry." Luke 15:24]

We have not actually laid our eyes upon Jesus in any physical sense, but by virtue of our imagination, we do "see" Him as we read the Word of God, we imagine all that Jesus said and did actually happened just as the Word of God said it did, and eventually, by the will of God, we come to believe it to be true. What we call faith is a gift that comes from God, but is created by God within us with the aid of our imagination, as God so designed. In this case, imagination is used, as our Creator God intended, for good.

But...

If something, a distraction, for example, causes us to turn away from the Word of God for any significant period of time, we are also capable of using imagination in ways that are evil, as our memory of God's Truth falters within us, our faith slides downward, and our imagination rises up and begins to doubt God's Word, to believe that which is not in alignment with God's Word, and to create ways of asserting itself against God Himself.

Sin is listening to our own imagination, when it tells us something that is contrary to God's Word, and believing it.

And sin is always subtle, not wanting to reveal itself to us, for the goal of sin is to defeat us, imprison us, destroy us...and to do so eternally, not just in the here and now.

Ironically, our only weapon against this enemy of ours is the Word of God, the very thing from which we allow ourselves to be distanced because of work, for example, and other distractions, such as:

...dysfunctional family members and their dramas,
...financial worries;
...unbelieving co-workers or friends,
...unbelieving spouses,

...our own wicked hearts.

Without the last item being true, none of the former items could affect our faith. After all, we allowed these distractions to pull us away from the Word of God. The fault lies in us alone. Always has, always will, for we are drawn away because of our own lusts, as God's Word rightly declares:

"But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin: and sin, when it is finished brings forth death." James 1:14-15

Lusts might include:
...our need to be needed by dysfunctional family members, spending time on their problems rather than with God;
...being moved by a fear of not having enough money versus trusting that the Lord will meet one's every need;
...escaping unpleasant realities by jumping into the distraction of worldly things (becoming "of" the world, rather than being "in" it just long enough to testify of God's love to mankind) rather than escaping to the loving arms of the Lord Himself, our shelter, our help in time of need, our Savior;
...driven by loneliness to the wrong place and the wrong person, believing the world's version of "love" rather than God's declaration of its true meaning, and, for the sake of the "better" version of love that the world offers, overriding, with various rationalizations, all that the Word says about what love between a man and a woman should look like, and about not being united with an unbeliever (then blaming God when the relationship ends, tragically for all concerned).

If we allow ourselves to be pulled away from the Word of God, even pulled away by intellectualizing the Word versus letting the Word cut through to the marrow of our very being in order to remove the evil in our hearts, then our imaginations are free to "create" thoughts in opposition to God's TRUTH; thoughts that MUST be taken captive by the Word of God or will take us captive instead. ["...take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5]. Thus, our imaginations can be used for evil, leading us to our own destruction.

I am thankful to "anonymous" for drawing my attention back to an old post, drawing me back to this blog, and through a decidedly pre-ordained circumstance, helping me once more to "see" sin...

...in me.