What Is THAT

There is a big difference between a burden that God is asking us to bear and something in our life that can and must be conquered for us to move forward in Christ. One of my pet peeves is when someone continues to live in a sinful way, or have a sinful thought process and claim that it's the "cross they must bear."

I also know that there are certain things God allows us to go through (or happen to us, depending on your theological viewpoint) and these are things we must work through to growth, not just try to have removed.

For example, my father has just found out that he has cancer. I pray and hope that he will be healed, but this may be something we all go through together as a family, and my father as an individual, that will not change regardless of my heart's desire. Our responsibility is to trust God and to lay it at His feet and allow Him to change us, not the circumstance. We must adapt to this situation, not vice versa.

But in my last posting, I was not talking about things like this. I was referring to sinful mindsets that we think can never be changed. Anxiety. Bitterness. Laziness. Lust. Coveting. Discontent. And some even deeper than these - core issues that are strangling the life out of us and we think that these are our "Burdens to Bear." I deal with these in my own life and as I wrote previously, I tend to be like the Samaritan woman. "This well is deep and You have nothing to draw with." I cave in to the thought that it will never change, and I adapt my life to it. But this is wrong and I have to come to the place where I go for broke.

In other words, I can't allow myself to accept this mindset. The well is deep, but He is deeper. He has the means to draw me out of this and into the living water.

How? I think we know how. We have to disengage from the destructive patterns. We have to immerse ourselves in the Word. When I allow myself to be filled with Him there is no room for this garbage.

Abraham sent Ishmael (the product of the flesh) out to the desert when Isaac (the spiritual) was born. We have to do the same thing with our fleshly thoughts. We have to send them out into the desert and stop feeding them and let them die there.