Yesterday I had a conversation with a friend about laying down our burdens. The phraseology makes this sound effortless. It is the “Christian” thing to do. We are simply to lay our trials, our sins, our worries, and our fears at the Lord’s feet, then stand up in confidence and move on. The power of the Spirit dwelling in us certainly makes this feasible. I have found that not only is it possible, but at times, it actually can be quite simple. When my heart wants to be finished with something, it is easily laid down. When I am communing with Christ and the Spirit is lording over my flesh, easily I lay it all down. The challenge is leaving it there.
The difficult part of laying something down is in not picking it back up. This is a rub in the believer’s journey: to not return to that trial, sin, worry, or fear, but to claim the freedom we have in Christ instead. Yet, how often do we reload our backpacks with failure and, before we can count to three, both shoulders are weighed down and our feet are stuck in the mire again?
Thanks be to God that He allows for do-overs. It seems He uses the redundancies of my life. It is through my recurring failures that I have grown the most and have been most keenly aware of His forgiveness and mercy. This is the God we serve! He has provided not only the means for our salvation through the sacrifice of Jesus, but also the ongoing cleansing we need in this fallen world. This is not my ticket to continue in the mire, but rather an inspiration to stay out of it!
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin (Romans 6:1-7).
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