[Tuesday's Devotional] - Laden

Today we are going to put the emphasis on the word “laden” in our verse of the week:

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28 [NASB]

Are you laden today?  Do you have a load on your plate, or on your back?  Sometimes we carry a load that doesn’t belong to us.  Maybe it is given to us by our family, our friends, our work colleagues or clients. 

Jesus is not the one who is putting a load onto us – rather he is seeking to take it off.  When he hung on the cross he carried the burden of our sins.  The once-for-all sacrifice he made means that the load of sin with which we are “laden” no longer belongs on our backs.  But perhaps Jesus was also referring to the load of regulations that the Jews had generated to make sure that everything was covered (and in the process that nobody could succeed in keeping all the rules) – like we thought about the Sabbath rules yesterday.

Sometimes I find myself feeling laden with sin, and I realise that I am carrying my sin around with me and have not confessed and repented for a while – the means by which we pass over our sins onto Jesus.  We also need to go back to the bible often to replace the lies of Satan with the truth of the Word – for example, you might need to remind yourself that your sin has not made you “so bad” that God has rejected you.  Here is a verse which might help in that situation:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,  neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8: 38-39 [NIV]

Lord, help me to turn to you in confession and repentance, in forgiveness and grace.  Keep me from being laden with things which don’t belong to me, Amen.

Dave MacLellan