What does it mean to you to be carried? Perhaps maybe for a married woman, it means the love of your life lifts you up into his arms to carry you across a small mudd puddle to keep your feet from getting dirty. Maybe for a parent, it means running towards your child who during a soccer game fell and hurt his knee. You lift the child into your arms and carry him to a calmer place and help ease the pain. Or for somebody who lost a loved one, it means closing the casket and carrying the loved ones body into the grave, back to the dust where it came from.
Well, I have never had the love of my life carry me across a small mudd puddle. I have never been a parent, and freak out when I see a child who got his knee skinned while rollar blading. I can't exactly say I have ever lost a real loved one who I was close to, and watching his or her body being put in the ground. But countless others have stood in these three positions.
We all have a story, a past a lot of us would like to forget all together. Me being one of them. But when I look back, I see a journey that made me who I am today. From what I went through growing up, I can now see God's fingerprints everywhere. Even in the hard times that I am now facing, God is letting me know He's still there. Because I choose to seek Him. And we all know that when you seek after something, exspecially God, we will always find it.
There have been many times personally when I have taken the fall. I kept telling myself that I am supose to accept the pain, believing God has a plan that will come from it, and try to move on with life carrying it behind me and on my shoulders. It wasn't until after a while somebody told me that things such as pain and death does not come from God. Well with that being said, why does God allow such things to happen?
I can't say its been an easy road for me. Depression has been a big factor in my life. And during those times I felt very much alone. I felt that I was to accept defeat because God was allowing it to overcome me. But I found that when I took it upon myself this way, it only got worse. My trust wasn't where it needed to be, and my faith almost disappeared all together. And when you don't have trust and faith, well DUH of course its only going to get worse!
I discover that God may allow things that hurt us to come to pass, but I also have learned that they seriously are not from God, but from our number one enemy. In Ephesians it says to put on the full armor of God, so that we may stand against the schemes of the devil. Whats the purpose of that verse being there is we see it right for us to accept the pain without fighting back? That verse is proof enough right there that we are to fight back against the constant attacks being made on us every single day. For a long time I allowed the sufferings to enter me, to become who I was because I thought it was only normal. But where was my faith and trust in God? I can't believe how patient God can be when for years and years the answer was right there but I wasn't listening. I had my own way of thinking.
You don't read often about fighting spiritual battles. I've read a lot of books that aren't blunt about fighting. All they tell you to do is pray and eventually it will go away. Well theres a lot more to it than just praying ya know! Ever heard of faith without works is dead? Thats right. You can pray all you want about something but if you worry about it all day whats gonna happen in the end? Zero! You must apply God's Word to your life and put your faith in action, or you won't get anywhere. You'll end up like I was for five and a half years boo hooing and complaining to God why this still keeps happening. And seriously, where in the Bible does it say that God wanted us to live life like that? He says in John 10:10 ,".....but I have come so that you may live life, and live it abundently." Pure joy was the purpose to life. And it all comes with a choice. Through all the times through my depression, I chose to suck it up like a kid eating sour candy and sulk. I decided to accept defeat and wait for God to fix it without me doing anything on my part. When will we learn that it will never and I mean NEVER get us anywhere!? One of my best friends commited suicide because she accepted the defeat. She chose not to fight. I do not want anybody to get that far away to where you feel like you HAVE to end your life because giving God back the gift He gave you is a sin!
Growing up, I never liked it when people would tell me, "Well you're not alone. God is there." As bad as I sound, I knew God was there. But to me that was not enough to get me going the next day, because really I felt like God had abandoned me. I can't explain all the reasons why I fell into depression. But what I can tell you is it didn't take me long to hit rock bottom, to where my feet was dragging on the ground, to where I was questioning God, to where doubt came crawling in. I felt like I had no strength whatsoever to get myself stable. I went on that way for a long time, accepted that this is God's plan for me to suffer and I am to wait for some miracle to come along like all those chick flick movies. But thats not God. Thats not my God. My God is a God of love. And I didn't realize exactly what I was doing. I was seeking alright, and I found what I wasn't looking for. In order to feel peace, we have to seek The Peace. The peace I was seeking I was hoping to hear from a friend, a guy, a tv show, something that didn't aquire me to turn to my Bible to look up the answers. No, I wanted the answer to come to me. And I got what I was searching for...absolutely nothing.
In the problems and battles that we face this day of age, we are to seek God in all of it. Find Him, search Him, know Him. I wasn't doing that. And I know a lot of people who won't even look to God because they blame Him for the trama that has happened in their lives. You can ignore it all you want, but it won't get you anywhere unless you are searching for the right thing. And the right thing, the right answer as been here all along waiting for us to grasp it.
When I started to seek God in the battle I was facing, it was then the answer to everything came. It was to trust. God has to have our trust. We have to be depended on Him completely, holding nothing back. I have tried giving God most of my life, only certian area's I wasn't too scardish of. But other area's I wanted to keep for myself because I was afraid God wouldn't give me what I wanted, but something that would make me uncomfortable or unhappy. How selfish I became through that time. Selfishness isn't a word in my dictionary, and I didn't want it lying around in my heart. For instance, the area of marriage. I was so scared to give it to God completely, because I thought that meant I would never find a strong Christian guy and God would just keep me single and feel miserable. But is it really God's plan to make us miserable? Wait, whats that verse again? "...but I have come so that you may live life, and live it more abundatly?" Whatever God's plans are, we are going to be happy no matter what! And if it doesn't go the way we think it should go, God will change our hearts and we will see the bigger picture that God really does know what He is doing if only we would give up everything in the first place. God hasn't let me down yet. And its not just me. God doesn't choose certian people to live happy and get all His glorious blessings and pain free feelings. I know people who are the happiest and most Christ-like people in the world. And yet, even they face trials and struggles I never have faced. But they keep their head up high through the pain, because God does not want us to accept defeat. He wants us to fight back! Happy people cry too you know.
I know a song from Building 429 called You Carried Me. The message to that song is so powerful. I have felt time that I was drooling on the floor of my living room because I couldn't stand. It was in those moments, that Jesus was carrying me. Because He already carried my punishment with his death. My sins were thrown upon His body. The sins I commited today put Him on that cross. If God didn't care about us so much to allow us, me, you, and the rest of the world to throw our blame on Christ, He wouldn't allow us to breathe! God wants us to live, even though He had to send His Son to die. He carried my cross, he carried my shame, and to this day, He still carries me when I am my weakest. And I feel Him most when I put everything down at the cross. Because we must take off out fears, our insecurities. Everything that feels like heavy luggage down before we can be carried by Him. Because He already carried our heavy luggage to the cross.
I believe this is what it means to be carried. To be carried by Jesus.
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