We talk a lot about how often we feel the “weight of the world” on our shoulders. We can sometimes see that weight in the faces of others, hear it in their voices, and even feel it in their spirits.
“For where you have envy and selfish ambition, there you find disorder and every evil practice.”
James 3:16 NIV
This weight is the anxiety and fear that results from pinning our hope and happiness on our worldly circumstances. We focus on having the right job, the right clothes, the right hair, the right house, the right “whatever” we believe will make us feel safe and secure in the moment.
However, that sense of safety and security is built on a foundation of sand. The circumstances of this world are fleeting. When we make them the basis of whether or not we are okay, we find ourselves living in fear of losing them instead of having peace with them.
The only true constant in this life is the love and truth of God. When we show pride in what we have accomplished without any help from others, we are in absolute defiance and denial of how big a role God plays in EVERYTHING we do.
The truth is that every success we experience in this life is because of God’s grace and blessings. The gifts and abilities we have, every last one of them, come from Him. Our very breath came from Him, without which we wouldn’t even be here.
My husband and I recently chose to move and downsize our belongings because we realized we didn’t want to be owned by the world. We looked around our lovely home and had such a powerful realization of how much excess we were carrying, and then realized that the excess was what we needed to put down.
Allowing the stresses and circumstances of this world dictate our happiness is leaving that fragile construction in the hands of a hyperactive toddler.
We throw away so much of what matters in the name of the world, never realizing what we’ve lost until it’s already been shattered by our poor choices. We assume there will be time to make up the difference, but in this life, time always runs out.
This is why it’s so critical to operate from a place of faith, not from a place of worldly confidence. We must realize that the perceived “weight of the world” we feel on our shoulders isn’t actually ours to carry.
For the most part, I’d say the notion that we are actually carrying all that weight ourselves is in our minds. All we have to do is let go and we’ll realize God is the one doing all the heavy lifting. Our faith is what reveals the truth to us as we continue in our efforts to operate from a place of belief instead of fear.
““Do you now believe?” Jesus replied. “A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me. “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.””
John 16:31-33 NIV
Love the Hand of God 