At His Feet

Do you ever feel overwhelmed to the point where you don’t know where to start? Do you ever feel down on yourself because you feel like you have let things in your life pile up and you feel like you are drowning? Or maybe you just feel like you are not doing enough spiritually, but you don’t know what to do to change it? You feel spread so thin that one more thing might break you. You are in a rut and you want to get out of it so bad!! This has been me more times than I can count. I have been a roller coaster in my life. Some days I feel like I can accomplish anything and other days I do good to get my shoes tied. I just roll through my day doing everything I have to do and at the end of the day I am thinking………what did I do today to take care of myself? Did I connect with my heavenly father today? What did I do today to feed myself spiritually? And the answer was nothing. I didn’t do anything for myself spiritually today. And after several days of this, I begin to feel insignificant no matter what I’ve done. It’s because I begin to feel disconnected from God. And this feeling carries over into every other facet of my life. I don’t feel like I am the wife or mother or any of the other hats I wear daily, that I should be. Most of all I don’t feel like I’m the Christian that I should be. We all have days where we just don’t feel motivated. We feel so far behind that we think we will never get caught up. Physically and mentally, we may be drained. It may be stress at work, stress at home, or it could be our hormone changes ladies. From taking care of young children, to chauffeuring older children for all their activities,  to taking care of elderly parents and other family members, to keeping our home somewhat in order, to juggling our careers if we have a secular job, we women are multitaskers. God made us this way because He knows we can handle doing more than five things at one time!! However, when things get too overwhelming, we can feel powerless and out of control. We may simply have too much on us at times. We may need to take something off of our plate if that is possible. But……sometimes that is just not a possibility. We often probably wish we could clone ourselves. We may have people depending on us for a number of reasons and we feel paralyzed and wonder………where do I even begin?  

Well friends, we begin by dropping to our knees in prayer and laying everything that is overwhelming us, everything that is worrying us, everything that has hurt us, everything that is causing us to feel out of control at God’s feet. That has become my mantra recently………at His feet. Saying this to myself over and over some days is what gets me through tough days. I simply pray in my mind to my heavenly Father and say to Him, “Father, I am leaving this at Your feet. I trust you to work your will with this situation. I know that everything happens in your time, not mine, and I’ll try my best to wait and be patient for your perfect will. Whatever your will is for this, I accept it.” Then I take a deep breath and I feel better for a while. It’s not a one-time thing though. Like I said, sometimes it is a constant recording on repeat in my brain when I am really struggling. Jesus said in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Before we turn to anything or anyone else to help us cope with anything in our lives, let’s immediately remember these verses from Jesus and connect with our Father in prayer. God will strengthen us and will never put more on us than we can handle. He knows our strength. In Isaiah 41:10, God says, “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, Yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.” But if we never open God’s word for guidance or never go to Him sincerely in prayer, then He can’t help us. We tie God’s hands when we turn to worldly ways to cope. 

So what about coping mechanisms? There are many unhealthy ways to cope. Some obvious ones are alcohol and drugs. I think we all realize the dangers of alcohol and drugs as coping mechanisms. Destruction of marriages and families, health problems, addictions, and untimely deaths have stemmed from using alcohol and drugs to cope with problems. From my experience, the majority of the time when people abuse these substances, it is because they are trying to forget something unpleasant/traumatic, relieve stress and anxiety, or both. They are trying to numb the pain through self-medication. As Christians, using any of these substances instead of going to our Creator is definitely not going to help us. It will harm us physically and harm our relationship with God. Not to mention, it is not glorifying to God, and makes us look like we belong to the world, which at that point we do belong to the world. However, there are other unhealthy coping mechanisms that are more subtle. Overeating and bingeing-eating have always been one of my unhealthy coping mechanisms. It’s harmful to me and in no way glorifies God when I do it. It’s a struggle that I’m continually fighting daily and with God’s help I will win the battle!! 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 reminds me, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” God has given me this body and I should be a good steward of it. Turning tothings other than God, especially behaviors that are unhealthy, can turn into really bad habits or even addictions. And let me just say, even seemingly healthy things for us can interfere with our relationship with God if we turn to them instead of God. Exercise can be one of those things. I speak from experience with this. Of course I firmly believe in exercise for our physical and mental health. It is so good for us if it is not turned into an idol. Exercise used to be something I really overdid, and put as my top priority every day. Nothing else mattered more to me than getting that workout done. It was my main focus at one time in my life when I was much younger. I used to beat myself up terribly if I ever missed a day. Exercise in itself is a wonderful thing and I try to make it a priority for my physical health, but my daily Bible study and prayer have to be my top priority every day for my spiritual health. My physical or mental health won’t get better until I am healthy spiritually. I realize that now. I wish I had figured this out a long time ago when I was much younger. Hint, hint to my younger readers. However, it is never to late to turn things around and get things in order no matter what age you are. I am 52 and I am trying to turn certain aspects of my life around. We can do it with God’s help!! I also tend to turn to television shows or movies to take my mind off of troubles and trials. Personally I really have to fight this. Some turn to social media. In themselves, these are not wrong, but if we do these activities in place of or ahead of Bible study and prayer, then they can become wrong. We must have balance. These activities are entertaining and enjoyable but they do not help our problems go away or help us deal with them, any more than drinking alcohol or taking drugs or overeating/bingeing, or exercising until we drop, or anything else. These are all just bandaids, not cures. Our Savior, the Great Physician is the only “cure”. Now, don’t misunderstand me. Let me repeat, I’m not saying that watching movies, TV shows, or looking at social media is wrong in itself. I love movies and shows as long as they do not influence me in a negative way and affect my Christian walk. However, anything that we turn to in order to cope with our trials in this life other than God is only a quick fix. Our trials will still be there and we will feel even worse because we haven’t turned to our Creator and our Father to help us. We will have a void in our lives that we will never fill with earthly activities or things. God has to fill our void or we will always be searching for a way to fill it. Whether it is healthy or not, it is still a quick fix and will not fill our void. There will always be times when we will feel physically and mentally drained. But if we are spiritually alive with God through prayer and through His word, then that feeling of being drained is so much easier to handle. God wants us to put everything weighing us down on Him. He wants us to trust Him with our lives. Just listen to Ephesians 2:4-5……..”But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)……” He is telling the Christians at Ephesus, who had already fully obeyed the gospel in baptism, that He loved them when they were sinners…..dead in their sin and He made them alive when they made the choice to be baptized and have their sins washed away. God still feels this way about us and has that same  great love for us today. If he loves us so very much, why would we want to turn anywhere else for help or comfort if we are Christians? He’s got us!!  

Everyone has their own trials. Trials are meant to draw us closer to Him if we let them. James 1:2-4 says “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” It’s really hard to find joy in trials, isn’t it? God knows we are human and He knows that trials do not make us happy, however we can still find joy because we know that God has got us in the palm of His hand if we are turning to Him. Let’s not forget that being happy and having joy are two separate things though. There is no place in God’s word where God tells us we will be happy all the time. But He does promise us joy, but only if we are abiding in Him. If we abide in Him always, we will find joy no matter what is going on in our lives. How do we abide in Him and find joy? Jesus tells us plainly how we abide in Him in John 15:10-11, “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.” 

We will find joy in trials if we truly lay everything at Jesus’ feet. Let’s do that friends. Life will still be hard at times, but laying our trials at our Savior’s feet and then going to His word for guidance will help us navigate through them in a healthy way and will help us grow as Christians.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Saturday and blessed week to come!! Thank you for reading!!

Copyright 2023, all rights reserved.