Share your Burdens

Galatians 6:2 (NLT)

Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ.

Do you ever feel like you are carrying burdens that are too heavy to bear? Perhaps you are feeling that way right now? Do you have someone in your life who will come alongside you during times of distress? Maybe you have co-worker friends, casual acquaintances or casual friends, but in times of distress no one seems to be there to support you. Do you feel like you are left all alone with your troubles? God did not create us to be solitary, He created us for fellowship. The dictionary defines fellowship as, "the companionship of individuals in a congenial (agreeable)atmosphere and on equal terms." God created us for fellowship. Fellowship with Him and fellowship with others.

God actually desires to have fellowship with us but He will never force us into a relationship with Him. Fellowship with God will not happen on its own, we have to want to have fellowship with Him. The New Living Translation of the Bible says it perfectly as follows:

Revelation 3:20 (NLT)

"Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends."

To elaborate a bit on the above scriture, what happens when you share a meal with a close friend? You talk about your life, you share personal experiences, trials, good news and bad news. You rejoice together and you cry together. That is what I feel is the meaning behind this piece of scripture. That is the kind of relationship God wants to have with us through His son Jesus. It is easy to begin to have a relationship with God. You don't have to wait until you are good enough because none of us will ever be good enough, He wants to be your best friend just as you are. He accepts you just as you are. To begin your journey into fellowship with God, all you have to do is believe that Jesus is the Messiah, that He came to earth, died on the cross for your sins and then rose again on the third day and is now seated at God's right side. If you would like to begin your journey into a relationship with God, just say the following prayer out loud right now:

Dear Heveanly Father, I acknowledge that I am a sinner. I repent, right now, for all of my sins and I am asking you to forgive me. You said in your Word, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved." (Romans 10:13). And so, I am calling on the name of your Son Jesus, to come into my heart and be my Savior right now. You also said in your Word, "If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved." (Romans 10:9). I believe with my all of my heart that Jesus died for my sins and was raised from the dead so that I may have eternal life. I thank you Jesus, for taking my sins in order that I can be cleansed and transformed into a new creation. Thank you for welcoming me into your family. In Jesus' name, Amen!

If you just said that prayer out loud, congratulations, I am so happy for you because you have just begun a new chapter in your life, one filled with hope, healing and transformation. I would love to hear from you, please do not hesitate to share with me. Once you have received Jesus in your heart, it is always good to share the good news with someone and let them know about your decision. Confess it out loud.

Once you begin having fellowship with God by inviting Jesus into your heart and life, you begin a relationship with Him. The best way to cultivate your new relationship is by spending time with God by reading His Word, the Bible. If you don't have one you can buy one or even read it online. Many churches will give you a Bible as well. There are many translations, but I would recommend the New Living Translation for new believers, it is very easy to understand and written in easy to understand modern-day language. The scriptures I used for this devotion are all from the New Living Translation (NLT).

Your relationship with God is no different than any of your other relationshiops with regards to the level of closeness and intimacy the relationship has. For example, if you spend time every evening going out for coffee with your buddy Linda, your relationship with Linda will be closer than someone you hang out with once a week or month. You decide how close or how distant your relationship with God will be by how much time you spend with Him. Another example, if you only hang out with God at church, you won't know Him as well as if you hung out with Him everyday. He wants to hang out with you every day. To hang out with God, you can read His Word, talk to Him throughout your day just as you would a friend. Also, make sure you take time to listen for his voice talking back to you, if you spend enough time with God, He will talk to you. So you see, it isn't just a one-sided conversation. You can also hang out with God in prayer or by listening to christian music and/or singing praises to Him. There are many ways to hang out with God. There is no set formula. I enjoy having a conversation with God while I am walking my dogs. We have had some very good conversations that way.

I want to make sure I mention something else. When you accept Jesus into your heart, that does not guarantee a perfect life with no more problems, etc. God never said we would never have trouble, but He did say in Hebrews 13:5 (NLT):

For God has said,
“I will never fail you. I will never abandon you.”

When we go through times of distress, God is there with you, walking you through it. Now you never have to go through anything alone again. There is more good news. If you just accepted Jesus into your heart or perhaps if you have but have never found a local church, I strongly encourage you to find a local church to attend regularly. Not only is church a place to go to be fed the Word of God and to worship Him among a community of fellow believers, but also, chruch is a place where you can meet other believers. Remember, when you invite Jesus into your heart you are given a new life, you are born-again into His family of believers (you now have christian brothers and sisters all over the place). Have you ever wished you had a sister or a brother? Or perhaps you have always wished you had a father or mother-type in your life because you either lost your mom or dad or they were not a good parent. Perhaps one or both were abusive in some way. When you enter into the new family of God, His family of believers, you again get to choose how close or distant those relationships will be. When you meet someone at your local church that you really enjoy being around, then cultivate that relationship. Through God's family of believers, He often provides for us the types of people we need in our lives that we never had in our biological family environment. Just remember, don't be too hard on your new brothers and sisters, they are also only human and are not perfect. None of use will be perfect until we get to Heaven.

This is all such wonderful news. Not only do you now have the Almighty God residing within you now, but you have free access to any local church that you feel comfortable in, where you can cultivate friendships with other believers. Just a word of warning though, when you are searching for a church, you need to make sure the church acknowledges Jesus as the Messiah, that He died for our sins and was raised on the third day. Some of the church denominations that I can think of off the top of my head are as follows: Pentecostal, Evangelical, Baptist, Evangelical-Free, Non-denominational and Alliance.

Now when you are going through tough times you, first of all, have God on your side now so you are NEVER alone, you also have a whole new family of believers at your local church who are willing to share your burdens and stand beside you.

Ecclesiastes 4:9 (NLT)
Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble.

Exodus 17:12 (NLT)
Moses’ arms soon became so tired he could no longer hold them up. So Aaron and Hur found a stone for him to sit on. Then they stood on each side of Moses, holding up his hands. So his hands held steady until sunset.

In the above scripture, Moses was holding a staff up in the air for a very long period of time in order to help the Israelites win the battle against the Amalekites. Moses was feeling overwhelmed with the staff he had to hold over his head for so long, but his son Aaron and his friend Hur stood alongside him and helped him through. When we are feeling overwhelmed by burdens or troubles, we can lean on God and He will carry us through. Also, our fellow christian brothers and sisters will stand alongside and share our burdens.

Discipline and Training bring Transformation

Our heavenly Father disciplines us for our own good, just as we as children were disciplined by our parents or we as parents discipline our children. Our parents did it and we do it as parents in order to teach our children. Every loving parent disciplines and corrects their children. God loves us more than we can ever imagine, it surpasses our understanding, our mere earthly human minds cannot understand the magnitude of God's complete and unconditional love for each and every one of us.

Before I go any further, I just need to clarify something. Unfortunately, some parents have taken discipline to a whole new level that is totally inappropriate called "child abuse." Whether it be verbal abuse, mental abuse or physical abuse, that type of punishment is not appropriate and not at all what God had in mind when He speaks of a father disciplining his child. This type of discipline is coming out of a heart full of anger, rage and frustration and the parent is taking it out on the child. Discipline involves training, teaching and correcting.

The definition of discipline is to bring to a state of order and obedience by training and control. When I was in competitive figure skating, I had to go through a lot of training and discipline in order to be ready for a competition. It wasn't always fun to train. Getting up at 5AM on a cold winter morning while it is still dark outside and skating at a cold rink for hours in the morning was not fun. That took discipline and training by my coach. If I hadn't gone through the training, I would not have been ready or prepared when it was time to compete. Just as we put our bodies through training for a sport, God puts our hearts through training and discipline in order to prepare us for the good plans that He has for us.

Jeremiah 29:11 (Amplified)

For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome.

Hebrews 12:6-11 (Amplified)

For the Lord corrects and disciplines everyone whom He loves, and He punishes, even scourges, every son whom He accepts and welcomes to His heart and cherishes. You must submit to and endure correction for discipline; God is dealing with you as with sons. For what son is there whom his father does not thus train and correct and discipline? Now if you are exempt from correction and left without discipline in which all of God's children share, then you are illegitimate offspring and not true sons at all. Moreover, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us and we yielded to them and respected them for training us. Shall we not much more cheerfully submit to the Father of spirits and so truly live? For our earthly fathers disciplined us for only a short period of time and chastised us as seemed proper and good to them; but He disciplines us for our certain good, that we may become sharers in His own holiness. For the time being no discipline brings joy, but seems grievous and painful; but afterwards it yields a peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it [a harvest of fruit which consists in righteousness -- conformity to God's will in purpose, thought, and action, resulting in right living and right standing with God].

We are not automatically God's children. In order to become His child, we must choose Him.

Deuteronomy 30:19 (Amplified)

I call heaven and earth to witness this day against you that I have set before you life and death, the blessings and the curses; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, "Why should I choose Him if He is just going to beat the tar out of me?" That is not the kind of discipline He is talking about. He works on our hearts. We start out with hearts full of sin and selfishness. If we choose life, He begins to work the selfishness and sin out of our hearts and little by little our life is forever changed for the better. He begins transforming us into His image. The way to choose life is simple. We simply need to accept and believe that God sent His son Jesus to this earth to pay for our sins once and for all by sending His son to die on the cross and raising Him back to life on the third day and is now seated at God's right-hand side. We then receive Jesus who then dwells in our hearts.

God has given us all free will, He did not create nor want robots. When the bible says, "I set before you life . . ." it means when we choose to believe in and accept Jesus we receive the free gift of eternal life in heaven with Him. When the bible says, ". . . or death," it means, when we live to please our sinful selves and seek to satisfy our own selfish desires we are rejecting Him and we are not His children and we will not have a place in heaven. Hebrews 12:8 said, ". . . you are illegitimate offspring and not true sons at all." I like the way I have heard Joyce Meyer say it once, I am not sure if I am quoting this correctly but it went something like this: "I would rather live my life as if there is a God and find out I am right, than live my life as if there is no God and find out I am wrong." Basically what she is saying is that you have nothing to lose if you choose Him and everything to gain.

Some of the pain or trails we go through are brought on by ourselves; by our own foolish choices. Some people think that when something bad happens to them God is punishing them. That is not true. God does not punish like that. Remember, God only disciplines His children and you only become His child when you choose to believe in His son Jesus. Then the discipline begins, but it is a discipline of the heart as He works to remove the sin and selfishness out of us. We become a work in progress.

Let me give you a real-life example of how God works sin and selfishness out of our hearts. Before I accepted Jesus and He came to live in my heart, I used to spit or throw my gum out the car window as I was driving. I never thought twice about it. One day, after I had received Jesus, I was driving down the road and I had spit my gum into my hand and was about to throw it out the window. I heard a voice in my mind say, "No, that is littering." I proceeded to roll the gum around in my fingers while I drove as I was figured out what to do with it. I ended up rolling it into my grocery receipt and sticking it back in with my groceries. It is the little things like that, that He begins to work on and bring change in your heart and in your life.

I will give you another real-life example. Before I received Jesus, I used to walk my dogs in the park and not bother to clean up after them. I knew it was against the law to leave it there but I didn't care. One afternoon as I was walking the dogs, one of my dogs was going to the bathroom. I let her do her thing and began to walk away when I suddenly heard a voice in my head say, "Pick that up!" I was not prepared. I never carried those "pooper" bags for scooping up the poop. I suddenly felt a strong urge to do the right thing. I ended up using an empty cup that someone had littered and a stick to flick the doggy doo doo into the cup. I then proceeded to walk, rather quickly I might add, to the nearest garbage can.

Those, my friends, are some real-life examples of how God disciplines. If you want to read another example of how God deals with more serious issues, read my post titled, "Heart Issues." Hebrews 12:11 says, "For the time being no discipline brings joy, but seems grievous and painful; but afterwards it yields a peaceable fruit. . ." If you have read my post titled, "Heart Issues" you will know that discipline was painful and grievous for me to go through but it was something that had to be done and now that I have I am so much better off and I have so much peace.

God is not sitting in heaven thinking up ways to torture us as some people would believe. He loves all of us. He wants all of us to be His children, but it is our choice.