Jesus Our Burden Bearer

Jesus Our Burden Bearer

Our son and daughter- in-law were recently blessed with the birth of their second child. My husband and I went to visit them in Huntington Beach. We wanted to share the first week of little Josslyn's life with them and hopefully to lend them a helping hand. The weather was pleasant and sunny and after a few days our daughter- in- law yearned to take a walk along the beach. We packed up the family and headed to the oceanfront.

Ordinarily Josslyn's big sister Lilly, a child with boundless energy, would have gladly skipped and run along for great distances with us. However, that day after walking for some time, Lilly, all of 4 years old now, said, “Nanna I'm so tired, would you please carry me.” Lilly had been a real trooper. She had weathered the stress of Mommy being in the hospital, of sharing Mommy with a new sibling, and of having her routine interrupted by a house full of relatives. While she had experienced the joy of this blessed event, I realized that she was also just plain tuckered out, and maybe even a bit perplexed with it all.

I gladly swooped Lilly up in my arms and began to carry her. I lagged sheepishly behind the rest of the group hoping not to draw attention to Lilly and myself. I was just sure that someone would tell me to put my granddaughter down and to let her walk on her own. They would be concerned that she was too heavy for me to carry and tell me that she didn't need this assistance. However, this precious little girl just melted into my arms. Her head sank into my shoulder in absolute trust and peace.

Yes, she was getting a bit heavy for Nanna to carry. However, I felt such strength and joy at being able to comfort her and bear her up at this transition point in her life. I couldn't help but think of how Jesus must feel when He carries us in His arms at those times when we are too weak to sustain ourselves. His love for us is overwhelming and I'm just sure that he delights in meeting our needs and in bearing our burdens. No wonder he advises us to become like little children in our trust and confidence in Him.

After a while my son finally turned around and “caught” me with Lilly enfolded in my arms. Instead of advising me to put her down, though, he gently revealed a knowing and compassionate smile. He tenderly reached out his arms to Lilly and proceeded to carry her himself. He was a daddy for the second time now and was growing in wisdom and grace. Perhaps he too, was identifying with the empathy which our loving Saviour feels for his sheep.

My hope is that we will turn in prayer to the Great shepherd when we feel that we just cannot cope.  He will gladly bear us up, brighten our path, and grant us rest for our bodies and souls.

"He tends his flock like a shepherd:

He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries 

them close to His heart; He gently leads those that have young." 

Isaiah 40:11  (NIV)

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened,

and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,

for I am gentle and humble in heart,

 and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."  

Matthew 11:28-30  (NIV)

By Cathy Friberg

Footprints in the Sand by Mary Stevenson "One night a man had a dream. He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord. Across the sky flashed scenes from his life. For each scene, he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand: one belonging to him, and the other to the Lord. When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in his life. This really bothered him and he questioned the Lord about it. 'Lord, You said that once I decided to follow you, You'd walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life, there is only one set of footprints. I don't understand why when I needed you most you would leave me.' The Lord replied, 'My son, My precious child, I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I carried You." ************************

TRUST AND DELIGHT

As we celebrate the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ I would like to share some scripture from the Old Testament.

Isaiah 25:6-9 gives prophetic reference to our salvation...

“On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, 
a banquet of aged wine— the best of meats and the finest of wines. 
On this mountain He will destroy 
the shroud that enfolds all peoples, 
the sheet that covers all nations; He will swallow up death forever. 
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears from all faces; 
He will remove His people’s disgrace from all the earth. The LORD has spoken. In that day they will say,“Surely this is our God; we trusted in Him and He saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in Him; let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation.”

In the this passage, “the shroud which enfolds all peoples” speaks of spiritual darkness. Truly death has been swallowed up and the disgrace of sin has been removed by our Saviour. The gospel message is so simple and yet so utterly profound. Trust in the Lord Jesus and Him alone for our salvation.

Acts 4:12 (NIV). Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved." 

“

It seems at times in our Christian walk it is refreshing and brings us strength to get back to basics. With myriads of philosophies and opinions spinning about us in our modern hectic world let us “cling to the old rugged cross” and truly delight in our redemption.

By Cathy Friberg

Just For Today

Lenten Season.

I finally had a talk with myself and began to really listen to the messages of this Lenten Season.

The time before Easter is a time for preparation, spiritual discernment, and  spiritual renewal.  It has been stated by many that this is a contemplative time of year. 

During the last few months I feel like I haven’t been open to feeling  God’s presence and love.  I am feeling despondent about a few things,  but a major concern  is  a dear  friend of mine is close to the time of being cared for by Hospice, and it is a clear reminder to me that nothing stays the same.

As I sit and read my lesson for the Bible Study Class I attend each week, I struggle to focus on what the writer is saying.   I find myself growing impatient with people who are always complaining about mundane things, or what I have judged to be mundane

Last week I had a talk with myself,  and I began to express gratitude again for my friends and family, and to have a more positive and open perspective to my daily life.

Two experiences just last week have filled my heart with love and gratitude .  I am finally feeling like a dry plant who is sprouting new buds from the fresh water it has received.

My husband and I attended our grand nieces’ first birthday party.  What a joy it was to be guests in our nephew’s home, and be able to watch the proud parents welcome people to celebrate their daughter’s first birthday.  Hearing the laughter and watching our family gather together for this wonderful occasion was a true example to me of love and gratitude.

That evening we had dinner in our daughter’s home.  After everyone was seated my daughter said,

“I just want everyone to know how happy we are to have you here with us in our new home.”

Hearing my daughter articulate her feelings and also revealing her emotions as she talked, was a gift.

I thought to myself, “Yes! her spiritual side has just paid us a visit.”

Then she looked at me and asked if I wanted to say grace.  I told her, she just did.  I added a short prayer of gratitude and felt that at that moment, life couldn’t get any better.

As I reflect on this past week, and also ponder about what is going to happen to my friend within the near future, I will try to practice what I know and believe .  I need to ask for God’s grace. I need to feel grateful for my friends and family, and I need to ask for guidance in how and what to do for my friend who may be near the end of her life.

A prayer I keep in my journal states it well:

“Just For Today.”  
By Marjorie Holmes

Oh, God, give me grace for this day.
Not for a lifetime, nor for next week, nor
For tomorrow, just for this day.
Direct my thoughts and bless them,

Direct my work and bless it.
Direct the things I say and give them blessing, too.
Direct and bless everything
that I think and speak
And do. So that for this one day,
just this one
Day, I have the gift of grace
that comes from
Your presence….

Peace,Connie I. Clark

FAVOR WITH THE KING

FAVOR WITH THE KING

I would like to share some insights and a passage from Tommy Tenney's book, “Finding Favor With the King.” In this unique and powerful work the author explores the Biblical book of Esther. He analyzes the Godly wisdom which Esther employed in winning over the heart of the King of ancient Persia. Esther's favor with the King was of dire importance. She had providentially been chosen by God to win the hand of the King. Later she was able to gain a propitious audience with her husband, the King. At Esther's persuasion, her Jewish people were saved by King Xerxes from a wicked plot of total annihilation.

Mr. Tinney applies Esther's diplomacy to our modern Christian experience of gaining favor and intimacy with the Ultimate King of Kings. We all long for deeper communion with our Lord. Perhaps we have a request for Him which seems as crucial and momentous for us as Esther's was for her King.

'Finding Favor With the King' presents some very insightful advice for drawing closer to the Master and obtaining His undivided attention. The following excerpt from the book offers a good example of this wisdom:

“Modern chamberlains of the King are responsible for teaching us how to move the heart of God. Good stewards teach us not to settle for presenting our petitions at the gate of thanksgiving or even in the court of praise. The wisest course is to present your requests in the place of intimacy. Wait until you only need to half whisper it. Once the King's heart is moved, history is rewritten and our future is changed.

Even as you read these words, the weight of some desperate need may be bearing down on your life. There is hope if you can receive the secret of the chamberlain. Set aside your needs for a moment and begin to worship Him in the face place.

Praise Him. Worship Him until you enter the chambers of intimacy. When your tears soak the carpet and all you can say is, 'Abba,' He will put His finger on your lips and say, 'You don't even have to say it. I know about your needs before you ask.'

When your worship lifts you into that privileged position of favor, you may find that He has met your need even before you ask.

God is no respecter of persons, but He will do some things for some people that He won't do for others. This is because they have learned the protocol of His presence. They followed in the footsteps of Esther and learned how to become a princess. Their hearts have been so changed in His presence that all they care about is wearing His favorite color and doing what he wants them to do. And they have reaped the rewards of finding favor with the King. They have become a favorite,- the King's bride, a queen!

The very atmosphere of heaven is predicated upon worship. Listen to the counsel of the chamberlain, for the path of praise and the stairway of worship lead into the King's inner chambers.

Begin with repentance and cleanse your heart and mind of every impurity. Fill your mouth with words of thanksgiving that take you through the first gate. Give Him gifts of praise and move ever closer to His heart. Draw near to Him and worship in spirit and in truth. When the King is engaged in this way, He has a heart to immediately respond to our petitions.

What is the secret? Listen to the chamberlain and follow in the footsteps of Esther. Then you will no longer present your requests in the formality of the courtroom. Nor will you be forced to shout them from outside the gates.

As a new testament chamberlain responding to a contemporary Esther: 'What should you wear to catch the eye of the King?'

Put on worship and wear it well. The King loves worship, especially when combined with one of His favorite fragrances …... humility. ”

Shared by

 Cathy Friberg

From “Finding favor With the King”

by Tommy Tenney

pages 102-105

God has given us eternal life

How many teeter on the edge of hope and assurance? Many don’t embrace the simple yet profound words of the Apostle John: “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. The one who doesn’t have the Son of God does not have life. I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know that you have eternal life.” And we most fully know that we know that we have Jesus’ life, His new life, His eternal life when we “Love the Lord [our] God with all [our] heart, with all [our] soul, with all [our] mind, and with all [our] strength. [And we] love [our] neighbor as [our self].”

I had an older brother, Steve.  I cannot say I ever really looked up to him, though he towered over me in strength and size.  No matter what he did, I loved him and loved his heart!  I will never forget that he never criticized another person.  Yet he was, so to speak, the prodigal child in our home.  Growing up, he got into trouble daily.  Some of the things he did, are unspeakable.  Feeling less than he was, he became a habitual liar.  Always trying to make others believe he was something, someone bigger and better than the rest.  I am not trying to paint an ugly picture of my big brother.  He, like many of us, had emotional childhood trauma that impelled him to make bad decisions in life. 

Those decisions eventually landed him in prison. When Steve went to prison, it sent me back to my past.  A past I did not want to ever revisit.  Memories I had tucked away so neatly began to come crashing down.  At the same time, I was all he had.  Mom didn’t talk to him.  Dad could care less.  The rest had figured him out long ago and had given up on him.  My heart was broken in ways I couldn’t and at times still cannot piece back together.  I made a choice to be there for him.  I told him he had to be nothing but honest with me or I would quit talking to him.  He promised me and after that never told me another lie.  I told him that there were things he did when we were young that I needed him to apologize for.  He listened, we cried and he told me how very sorry he was.  I forgave him. I told him he needed to write letters to those he wronged.  He wrote letters admitting how wrong he was and how sorry he was for what he had done.

For the next two years, every conversation began and ended with Christ, His amazing forgiveness and abundance of love for us. Weekly I sent him verses to look up, poems, my favorite songs and stories of how God was working in my life and in those around me.  My brother started out sweating the small stuff, questioning many things of the bible.  At the end of the two years, my brother accepted Christ! 

A couple weeks later my brother was transferred to the prison that would be his home for the next 35 years.  The day he got there, he fell ill and wound up in the infirmary.  He went back and forth from there to the hospital several times. His guards were amazing. They let him call and talk to me a few times.  He died of euro sepsis a few weeks after arriving, never serving one day in a cell! The day after he died, the nurse that was with him called me.  She told me she had sit and talked with him about God for three hours before he took his last breath.  He made her promise that she would call and tell me that he was very comfortable in his salvation.  I know my brother didn’t just die, but God rescued him.        

I pray that one day I will see him in Heaven and we can talk about how wonderful Jesus is…  And that we will reflect on those days we openly shared His word. Those days where he began his pilgrimage from doubt to assurance. When he affirmed in his head and his heart that he loved Jesus above all else – with all that he is, with all that he has, based upon all of Christ’s worth. 

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength and see where He takes you!

Written by

Terri Baker

THE ROAD TO EMMAUS

My daughter and I took a stroll in a local park on Saturday morning. We have only walked in this particular setting once or twice before. We sauntered casually along the meandering path. The sun filtered down ever so gently through the immense ancient looking trees. As I gazed about this lovely scene I was reminded of a famous painting called “The Road to Emmaus.” The picture portrays Jesus and two of His disciples walking on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. This depiction was inspired by the passage in Luke 24: 13-31. In this story, Jesus suddenly comes alongside His two friends to join them in their walk. Oddly enough, however, the disciples do not recognize the Master. This event takes place on Easter Sunday after the Lord's Resurrection. Jesus asks the two men what they have been discussing. They said to Him, “Are you the only one who has not heard about all the things that have been happening in Jerusalem the last few days?” Jesus coyly replies, “What things?'

The men proceed to tell Him that Jesus, whom they believed would redeem Israel, had been crucified. They also relayed that some women had gone to His tomb and found it empty. Their hopes that Jesus was their Messiah had been dashed and they were very discouraged. At that point Jesus explained all the scriptures concerning Moses and the prophets who had predicted these events and their significance. In their grief, confusion, and concern with their own feelings of abandonment and disillusion, the two disciples did not even recognize that the one they were talking with was Jesus Himself! It was not until later on that evening, upon breaking bread with the Lord, that His followers eyes were opened and that they actually recognized Him. At that point He disappeared from them.

I wonder how many times, in the midst of our own problems, that we also do not recognize Jesus in our midst? Like the apostles, many times we are not expecting Jesus among us. On those occasions we just do not see Him by our side. Perhaps in our own homes we become irritated with a troublesome child or with a disagreeable spouse. Perhaps we brush off a lonely church member who takes up a little too much of our personal time. Do we fail to see Jesus in others when they are hurting, sick, or even in need of material blessings? These people, like Jesus on the Road to Emmaus, may have divine wisdom and insight for us when we stop to share time and love with them. Let us ask the Lord to open our spiritual eyes and to see the divine appointments He has for us even when they interrupt our own personal agendas. Let's pray that we will see the Lord in others and treat them with love, consideration, and generosity.

In this way we will honor God's words which declare:

“The King will reply,

'I tell you the truth, whatever you did

for one of the least of these brothers of mine,

   you did for me."

 Matthew 25:40

NIV

By Cathy Friberg

He is Our Portion

      

While studying Lamentations, a book in the Old Testament, it really
brings to mind who our portion is.  It was the Lord who brought on the
captivity of the Israelites to the Babylonians when they refused to
obey the Lord's commandments.  All that the Lord had blessed them with
was taken away.  As they grew further away from the Lord and
worshipped other gods and images, His grace finally left and they had
to pay the consequences of suffering, being in bondage and a
seperation from the Lord.

The Lord is our portion.  He commands for us to trust in Him and obey.
 He has given us the ability to be empowered by the Holy Spirit to be
lead by Him in the right direction we should go.  When we trust in His
guidance, depend on His word, seek His favor and put Him first we will
have the perfect peace that passes all understanding.  Even if we go
through various trials, when we put our trust and faith in Him we can
have the hope that He will always lead us in the path of righteousness
for His name sake.

It is very easy in our World especially in our country, to seek other
gods, so to speak.  When we are down we can use other means to comfort
us.  But we need to realize that God is our portion, our strength in
our time of need, our encouragment when we are down, our everlasting
force that keeps us moving forward on a fruitful meaningful path.  It
does not matter what the circumstances may look like in our life, how
people may treat us or view us.  What really matters is that He is our
portion and that He can give us the perfect peace that passes all
understanding, the love in our heart that we so disperately desire and
need.

He has put in our hearts a desire to love and serve Him.  We have been
wired to love and worship Him.  We all sense a void in our hearts that
always wants and never gets satisfied.  A need to look up to someone
we can believe in.  When that desire is not the Lord that we are
worshipping and looking up to,  we are dissappointed every time.  For
nothing is forever accept the Lord.  The lives we live and all that we
have in our lives is temporal, but the Word of God, our Lord is
forever.

As we look to the things that are above, our Lord and His everlasting,
power, peace and salvation that we attain through Him we will realize
that is all we need.  He is our portion, the Only Portion that we need
always and forever.  He is our all and all.

May you rest in His perfect peace and love and desire only His Portion
which is all we need in Christ Jesus and may you sense the comfort,
love and understanding of knowing Him is enough.

Serving Him,
KC