Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Tuesday's Truths



1 Pet 5:7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.

Matt 28 - 30 "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

2 Cor 12.9-10 God said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Ps 55.22 Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.


“A Letter from Jesus Christ to the Soul that Really Loves Him.”
By John of Landsberg, 1555

One thing I have to warn you of especially is your constant tendency to grow fainthearted under the weight of your faults and oversights and an inclination almost to despair when a sudden lack of confidence reduces your firm decisions to nothing. I know those moods when you sit there utterly alone, eaten up with unhappiness, in a pure state of grief. You don’t move towards me but desperately imagine that everything you have ever done has been utterly lost and forgotten. This near-despair and self-pity are actually a form of pride. What you think was a state of absolute security from which you’ve fallen was really trusting too much in your own strength and ability. Profound depression and perplexity of mind often follow a loss of hope, when what really ails you is that things simply haven’t happened as you expected and wanted. In fact, I don’t want you to rely on your own strength and abilities and plans, but to distrust them and to distrust yourself, and to trust me and no one and nothing else. As long as you rely on yourself you are bound to come to grief. You still have a most important lesson to learn: Your own strength will no more help you stand upright than dropping yourself on a broken reed. You must not despair of me. You must hope and trust in me absolutely. My mercy is infinite…



This is some of what we read last night in Bible study. I have to say this is a hard one for me. I understand it in my head, casting all my cares upon him. I get that I need to do this, that I need to not rely on my own strength but His. But what does this really look like? How does one turn this from an ethereal ideal, to reality? Honestly I'm not sure. We are really struggling with our 9th grader and his Physical Science this year. What does it look like to cast this on God and not try to do this in my own strength? God does not come sit in my kitchen and teach my son science. Physically, it is my body sitting next to my sons body, reading the book. What does it look like to cast this on God?

The letter from Jesus by John of Landsberg could have been written straight to me. That first sentence hits me squarely between the eyes...One thing I have to warn you of especially is your constant tendency to grow fainthearted under the weight of your faults and oversights and an inclination almost to despair when a sudden lack of confidence reduces your firm decisions to nothing. This is Pride. Self Pity is pride. Ouch. I don't want either. I know I am not perfect, and yet I'm horrified when I fail.

Today's Tuesday's Truths doesn't have many answers. I am praying this week that God will SHOW me in the everyday what it looks like to cast my cares on Him, to hope and trust in Him absolutely. To not despair when a sudden lack of confidence reduces all my firm decisions to nothing...

No comments: