In Pursuit of God’s Heart-Part 3: Roll it all Away

“Commit your way to the Lord,  trust in him and he will do this: He will make your righteousness shine like the dawn, the justice of your cause like the noonday sun.         Psalm 37:5-6

To pursue a Heart of God, we have to TRUST in God’s provision and DELIGHT in God’s desires, but we also have to COMMIT to God’s leading.  The last one is more challenging as it requires action to live out your willingness to be under God’s leadership and authority.

In Greek, commit actually means “to roll away” all of your negative thoughts and feelings to the Lord, like rolling away a stone or the ocean flowing away from the shore.  It makes me think of rolling a ball with my babies when they first learned to sit.  Sitting across from them on the floor and rolling the ball into their minute, yet chubby hands.  Most of the time, they couldn’t roll it back, but what a thrill it was for them to be able to take the ball from me, often to merely lift it to their mouths.  God wants the same for us.  He wants us to roll away all of the burdens of life to him.  The heartbreaking diagnosis, the unexpected lay off, the wayward child, God wants all of it. He isn’t planning on giving it back, so we shouldn’t try to retrieve any of it.  All of our concerns and worries about the future are for Him and Him alone to work out because he already has.  In the end, our lives will be a reflection of God to everyone around us.  We will “shine like the dawn”, as the sunlight breaks through the darkness of a new day.  The worries of this world can create such darkness that it can hinder any of His light and hope, trying to enter in.  Roll them away.

We are all weak.  God knows our greatest struggle will not be rolling our burdens away, but leaving them at His feet.  I can share with you, from experience, the act of not leaving the pain and grief with Him, is more arduous than the experience itself.  In Luke 24, after Jesus was crucified, then buried in a tomb, a stone was rolled in place to enclose the opening of the cave.  The next day, when the women came to the tomb, they found the stone had been “rolled away” and their Savior gone.  That stone would have been too heavy for anyone to move.  Our burdens are too heavy for us to do anything with them. They only function to block our way to the risen God.

In 1 Samuel 16, God tells Samuel to go find the next one he is to anoint to be king of Israel.  Saul was still on the throne. Samuel feared death if Saul discovered him anointing a new king.  Samuel asked God, “How can I go?”  God didn’t give him the whole plan, just the next thing.  God didn’t even tell Samuel who the next king was immediately. When we commit our way to God, we have to roll away our fear to be ready to do the next thing.  Our fear, worry, stress will hinder us from fully doing what God wants us to do in the next day, hour, or moment.  Cast off your fear and go to the next doctor’s appointment with hope.  Roll away your anxiety and make your resumé gleam with God’s promise of provision.  Leave your grief and continue to love and pray for that prodigal.

God’s way is not a way of darkness, but of light.  Paul was physically blinded by God’s light in Acts 9:3.  By rolling my burdens to Jesus and leaving them at his feet, is his blinding light shining in my life, giving others hope?  Because of His bright light in me, are others wanting to know God’s heart as I do?  It’s what God wants for each of His children.  For us to know His heart and live our lives reflecting His bright light.  With each trial and struggle, the more I have rolled away my burdens and clung to God, the closer I have been drawn to His heart.  There is no place I would rather be, but taken into God’s heart and bask in the glow of His light.