BBD 01.22.15 Heavy (New)
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The Burning
Bush Devotional
01.22.15
Heavy
For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me; My vitality was
turned into the drought of summer. Selah. - Psalm 32:4 NKJV.
He has hedged me in so that I cannot get out; He has made my chain
heavy. - Lamentations 3:7 NKJV.
This
morning I viewed a spectacular scene as we had received heavy snow in western
Oklahoma. God indeed had painted His world with the beauty of snow. The
branches of the trees were heavy with snow, weighed down. With the snow and the
branches being so heavy with snow, and my having a mild case of flu; it
reminded me of a time while I was working in the oilfield. This occurred a few
months after the bust had come to the oil and gas industry in the 1980s. To
survive financially, after the work had ended for my business, I had gone back
to work for a company I had worked for in the past. I was thankful to have any
kind of job and if I wanted to keep my employment I had to be there every time
I was needed whether I was sick or not. It appeared that even the company I was
working for might soon go out of business and lay off all of their employees.
That did happen, but it was several months later.
In
1983, I was an operator for a casing inspection unit which used electronic
sensors and radiation to find defects in the casing before it was placed into a
well. During this time, I was worried about our financial situation, keeping my
job, what I would be doing, and even where I would be living in the future. One
particular job was in freezing weather and it was especially difficult. I was
on 24-hour-call, and when I was called out for the job I had a severe
respiratory infection of some kind. This infection made it feel like there was
a heavy weight upon me, and every step, and every move took much effort. This
went on for several days, and by this time Jeanie and our sons also had the
infection. When Jeanie took the boys to the doctor, he gave her a prescription
for me too. After a few more days, about the time the job was completed, I had
started finally feeling well again. It had been a miserable few days, and I had
felt like God’s hand was heavy upon me.
This
old world has a way of burdening us. We become burdened with worries about many
things: our health, our family’s health, our finances, our job, fears of the
violence occurring around us, and most of all with sin. We try to cope, we work
hard, we try to do the right thing and it still seems like everything is coming
apart at the seams. Maybe this was some of what David was experiencing when he
wrote Psalm 32 where he says, “When I kept silent, my
bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. For my iniquities have
gone over my head; Like a heavy burden they are too heavy for me (Psalm 38:3-4
NKJV).” David had many things in his life that were bearing down upon
him, including his sin. It was even affecting his health.
Is the
weight of this world heavy upon you? Is your health, or finances, or
employment, or sin, or something else giving you an ever increasing burden to
carry? David found the answer for his situation as he says in the first two
verses of Psalm 32, “Blessed is he whose transgression
is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not
impute iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.” Jesus says in Matthew 11:28, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy
laden, and I will give you rest.” Give your burdens to Jesus! Do you think
that you have too many problems for God to handle? Do you think that you have
sinned too great or too much for God to forgive you through Jesus? God says
through the prophet Jeremiah, “Through the Lord’s
mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new
every morning; great is Your faithfulness (Lamentations 3:22-23).” Your
problems, your sins, are not great enough to exhaust the mercies of God,
because His mercies “…are new every morning.”
Copyright © 2015. Ed Wrather. The
Burning Bush website has been online since January 31, 1998. On June 8, 1998
the email version of the Burning Bush Devotional was first sent. Ed Wrather
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