Turning our burdens over to Him

I talk a lot about my nieces and nephews; this is because I have so many of them.
(20 in all; 12 nieces and 7 nephews)

I have one sister; she has 8 children.

Two adopted sisters; they are to young to have children. (9 years old and 4 years old girls)

I have two brothers; one is two years younger than I am, he has 7 children. My youngest brother is 10 years younger than I am. Between him and his new wife; they have 5 children.

Friday morning I went to court with my niece-in-law. My nephew and niece were having very serious marriage problems a year ago. They split up for a while, my nephew turned to alcohol. He was in a bad accident a few months ago, hurting the person that was with him. He has been in jail since May for this offense. His court date was Friday; Him and his wife are trying to get there life back on track now. Problem is we all have to pay the consequences for our sins. I went to his hearing on Friday. They gave him a year in the county jail; it was go hard to see my nephew with jail clothes and shacked. He and his wife have 2 children with one on the way. I feel badly for both of them, but I know we all have to pay the consequences for our wrong doings. I pray this will wake both of them up to the sin they have both commented. God could have taken his life or the life of the person that was in the car, this could have been a lot worse. I tried to disciple my nephew when his wife first left him. I told him he needed to live his life for Christ regardless of how his wife is living hers. This is a very hard thing to do. We want to hurt others the way they have hurt us, instead of turning to Christ and letting Him handle it. He will if we let Him.

If we will turn our problems over to the Lord and not try to handle them ourselves we wouldn't have half the problems we do today. My nephew is now turning things back to Christ, but God had to stop him dead in his tracks. Put him behind bars in a county that will not tolerate this behavior. He is being treated like a person that did a very serious thing. I thought about this throughout the day on Friday. He did comment a very serious offense. He could have killed another person with his actions. I pray he and his wife have learned from all of this.

We need to turn our worries and problems over to God; we need have a deep desire to please Him. God gives us instructions in his word how we can do this.

The first thing we need to do is pray and tell the Lord that you hear what He's saying in John 16:33, which are where Jesus says, "These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." Then, ask the Lord to show you how He has "overcome" your problems, your worries, your anger, and your guilt. My nephew would try this, but he could get away from what his wife was doing. He blamed her for all the problems they were having instead of looking at him and how he needed to change.

This is a hard thing but God reveals to us in His word "the Bible" that we can be of good cheer that we can rejoice in our "problems" because God's Word says in Romans 5:3-4, "knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope." And we need to see our "worries" as an opportunity to practice Proverbs 3:5-6, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths." We can counteract our "anger" by obeying Ephesians 4:32, "And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you.", and we can deal with our "guilty" feelings by simply believing in the truth of 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." All of our problems, worries, anger, and guilt can be dealt with through simple faith in God's Word.

In reality, feelings come from thoughts, so, even though you can't change how you feel, you can change how you think. And this is what God wants use to do. For example, in Philippians 2:5, Christians are told, "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." In Philippians 4:8, Christians are told to think on "things" that are "true", "noble", "just", "pure", "lovely", "of good report", and "praiseworthy" In Colossians 3:2, I tried with all my might to get my nephew to think this way. When his world was falling down around him, I begged him to take a good look at his own life. God wants all of us. Sometimes he takes things out of our life so we will turn to Him. Thing that we may put above Him.

We are told to "Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth." I am sure my nephew thought this was easy for me to say, my husband hadn't left me. I still believe if he would have prayed for God's Word to guide him and prayed and turned it over all of his problems, worries, and anxieties, God could have handled this with out him sitting in jail for a year.

The secret is we have to give Christ all the things in our lives. We have to be willing to give Jesus our burdens, hurts, wants, needs. Without Christ in our lives what really do we have?

1 Peter 5:7, "...casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you."