Psalms 55:22 Cast thy burden upon the LORD, and he shall sustain thee: he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.
Over twenty years ago, not long after I came to faith in Messiah Yeshua (Jesus) the Lord began putting it in my heart to create a website where believers could be informed about world, national and Christian news — so that they could more effectively pray. I could not have imagined what Worthy News has become. Back then, I knew nothing about designing websites. I started with a Pentium 1 … a tiny hard drive by today’s standards — just a few gigs. Every few minutes the overload brought it to the point where it would crash. Incredibly frustrating! I finally figured out that in order to fix the problem, I had to dump all the unused programs and unnecessary information. Soon afterward it functioned again, and I learned something…
The responsibilities of life and ministry can become like that overloaded Pentium 1. Take me for example: whose family is growing and that needs, whose online ministry needs regular oversight, traveling all across the world, all in the context of the stress and pressures of life … well, at one point the overload felt a bit like my original computer… on the verge of crashing!
What to do? Continue carrying more burdens than I can bear, processing more information than I need? No. I’ve had to retreat, and I needed to re-evaluate…what is the Lord giving me and what have I taken upon myself? And which burdens am I not casting upon Him?
Allowing ourselves to nearly crash is not spiritual. There will be times when life’s pressures seem unbearable, but we can be prepared for those times if we practice a regular discipline of evaluating our priorities in normal daily life, off-loading unnecessary tasks, and casting the important things onto the Lord, in prayer. If we do so, it may save us from “crashing” in the long run!! Don’t crash … take a long-deserved rest and enjoy your weekend, and rest in His finished work! Shabbat Shalom!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]The children of Israel are facing yet another test, this one, even more severe than hunger– dehydration – which, unabated, quickly leads to a miserable death. Yet, now, every day they are also seeing the miracles of God, who is feeding them regularly with manna, and surrounding them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Once again, they fail the test, even in the midst of their daily witness of miracles. So even though the test is more severe, the evidence for trust is that much greater.
Is there something about miracles that makes them forgettable? Or is the problem with us? After journeying for a season the children of Israel were faced with hunger — another test. This time, naturally faced with starvation, they murmured against the Lord, AGAIN! You’d think they might begin to put it together that God truly wanted them to trust Him. Apparently not yet. The dire circumstances attacked their mass cerebral cortex (memory) and once again they went into attack mode, bitterly complaining in unbelief. The Ten Plagues, the pillar of fire, the Red Sea walk, the Egyptian chariot soup, none of these connected to the present hunger pangs. Nature trumped super-nature, and sadly, God Himself.
The Apostle Paul’s discourse in 1 Corinthians 10 recalls the great miracles God performed for the children of Israel during the time of the Exodus. Delivered from Egypt and Pharaoh’s slavery, they were dismayed to discover his maniacal rage pursuing them anew, driving them into a deadly corner and imminent destruction. Humanly speaking, their terror and panic was understandable. With their eyes they could only see the wrath of Egypt succeeding at last to utterly destroy them. In that state of mind, how might they have remembered the consecutive miracles God had wrought against Egypt which had brought them to this very place?
When Ruth pledged her alligence to Naomi and to the God of Israel, it wasn’t based on, “What ifs?” or circumstances. It was a faith rooted in her devotion to Naomi and God even to the point of death!
This season of the Resurrection also occurs during a significant Old Testament feast day, the feast of “Firstfruits” (Hebrew, “bikoreem”). When Yeshua (Jesus) rose from the dead he was the firstfruit of the resurrection. On that day the keys of Hell and Death were obtained by our Lord. The apostle Paul connected the resurrection with the feast of Firstfruits in his letter to the congregation at Corinith. “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.”
There is a long standing tradition of cleaning one’s house in the springtime – hence the term “spring cleaning”. One source for this tradition is certainly the Jewish Passover (Pesach). Each spring as the holiday approaches observant householders in Israel and around the world perform a meticulous cleaning of their homes, especially to be sure there is no leaven in the house before Pesach begins. Leaven, in scripture, is often a metaphor for sin and impurity; and this season of the year is often a time for emphasizing “spiritual housecleaning”.
I’ve heard so many Christians ask, “How can I get more of the Holy Spirit?” As if the Holy Spirit is some kind of power or force that we can control or weild. What we should really be asking is, “How can the Holy Spirit have more of me?”