Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Tues Devo: Not a burden

1 John 5:3 “Loving God means keeping His commandments, and His commandments are not burdensome.” (NLT)

Hello,

This week at church this verse was used in the sermon, and I just couldn’t shake it from my mind. What came through my mind is how quickly we like to play the victim and whine about our circumstances. So often we seem to take pride in being the one who has so much going on that we can barely handle it. I am not sure if we like the attention it brings and hope for sympathy. Perhaps, we like to give ourselves an excuse for failure…telling others how much and how hard things are up front, then if we fail we can just point to that….of course, that is usually done when we don’t really want to give full effort in the first place!

But how do you view what God is asking us to do in Scripture? His commandments are not burdensome – they are not something that causes stress or anxiety. God has not set in front of us instructions that are designed to be overbearing and heavy – so we can’t use that as our excuse.

If we are feeling that His commandments are too much – we need to re-evaluate the other things in our lives. Chances are that when this starts to happen, it is because we have placed competing priorities and desires ahead of or in line with obeying God. It is not His commandments that are the burden in that case – it is trying to fulfill His commands while trying to fulfill things in opposition to those commands at the same time.

Have a blessed day,


No comments:

Post a Comment