Lay them down

Take my fret, take my fears, all I have I'm leaving here.  Be all my hopes, be all my dreams, You're my delight, my everything. ~ Only You, David Crowder Band

Jesus said, "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest...Cast your cares on the Lord and he will sustain you...Cast all your anxiety on the Lord, because he cares for you," (Matthew 11:28; Psalm 55:22; 1 Peter 5:7).  All of these verses beckon us and tell us that we have a part to play.  Jesus wants us to live worry-free, fear-free, and care-free.  Looking at your life, perhaps you are wondering how to do that.  If He is a perfect God, can't He just take these things from me?  No, because He gave us free will and we choose to pick them up again and again when He has asked us to lay them down, to give them to Him, and not take them back upon our shoulders.  In his devotional, The Daily Chase, Tommy Tenney writes, "God would not tell us to 'lay aside' something if we were not fully capable of doing it.  It is not that we cannot; it is that we will not. We have established habits and imposed things upon ourselves that have nothing to do with the gospel," ("The Job of Unloading is in Your Portfolio, Not God's").  Jesus has given us a prescription, a plan, for us.  He says, "Lay down your way, your thoughts, your agenda, and take up Mine.  I promise that I will sustain you, if you will only let Me.  I promise that you will have rest, if you will only listen to Me.  I promise that you will not stumble and fall, if you will only follow where I lead you to go."

~Heather Potts~