By Cheryle Douglas FMI
During a serious family illness, the Lord reminded me once again that I do not need to carry burdens for my family. Had he not reminded me I could have easily continued to sink into despair and become even weaker to be any good, and as a result, compound the problem by becoming a greater burden myself exasperating an already difficult situation for everyone.
To love my family does not mean I need to worry about them.
Too many mothers think that if they are not worrying they are not loving, or to put it another way, if I am not worrying about my family, I am not loving them.
We do seek Jesus to help us, but all too often do not do what he asks; as far as worry goes, he asks that we cast all our worries upon him because he cares for us, and our families. (1 Peter 5:7)
To cast upon means to throw upon quickly in the original ancient Greek language of the new testament, and so the Word of God tells us that we are to quickly, without delay, give any cares to Jesus to deal with; We are to trust him to deal with them, and he will.
When we are overwhelmed with burdens for our loved ones, they will quickly crush us and wear us out. In fact this is what happened to me – I became so overwhelmed with the burden that I ended up sick also.
Over the years I have learned that what we need to do is to consecrate the one we love to God; to let go and allow God to work in this person’s life.
To consecrate means to give this person to God.
We may find this very difficult to do because we think no one can love this person and especially our children as much as we do, but God does. God loves them so much more than we could ever imagine.
So as an act of love to this person or our children, we need to consecrate them to God and allow Him to work in their lives. To consecrate someone very precious to us is like giving a love gift to God. We may need to keep repeating this consecration many times if we keep taking back the burden.
We are to be yoked to Jesus, who makes our burden light. (Matt 11:28) Jesus is the Rock on which we build our lives.
Whatever the storm in our lives it will not prevail against this Rock. When we put our faith in Jesus we will not be shaken (Isaiah 28:16) St. Paul referred to Christ as the Rock from which came living water that the Israelites drank in the desert. (1Cor 10:4)
Jesus also invites us to come and drink the life giving water that he will give us (John 7:37-39) This life giving water is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of courage and strength who enables us to be rocks of courage and strength for our families.
We as Church are the temple of the living God. We are the living stones of this temple and Christ is the foundation or cornerstone. (2Cor 6:16)
As living stones, we are rocks for Christ in our families and our communities.
Jesus calls us to build His Church in our families and communities. We are to stand in the gap, and intercede for our families. We are to be rocks of faith and strength for our families, standing in prayer for them and giving them to the Lord each day – With our lives built on Christ, our Rock, no evil will prevail against us, or our families.