The Bowl

What would happen if you wrote down all of your struggles, fears, heartaches, failures, vulnerabilities and weakness on little slips of paper and then put them all in a bowl?  And I don't mean only the BIG issues, I mean even the little things that make you anxious, like getting enough sleep so that you look pretty in school/work the next day so the cute, new guy notices you.  Or worrying about how many times you cracked your back today because you heard that can cause problems down the rode and lead to back pain.

What would happen if you put everything that weighs you down in a bowl and then let a random stranger pull one of those things out arbitrarily?

Pause.  Freak out. Unpause.

And what would happen if that stranger stood up on stage in front of billions of people and read that piece of paper through a loud speaker?

Pause.  Have a spaz attack. Unpause.

And WHAT IF that stranger then asked you to come up on stage and tell everyone why that was weighing you down and what you were going to do about it?

Pause.  Die.  Unpause.

What would you say?  Why IS that fear/struggle/heartache/failure/vulnerability/weakness (man that's a mouthful) weighing you down?

I think it all comes down to trust.

You fear your secret getting out because if it did, you can't trust that anyone would still love you.
You struggle with keeping good habits and breaking bad ones because you are only trusting yourself.
Your heart aches with the loss of friendship because you can't trust that new ones are right around the corner.
Your failures haunt you because you don't trust the future.
You are vulnerable because you trusted too much.
You are weak because you can only trust yourself.

What would happen if, instead of trusting only in ourselves, we trusted in someone who will never let us down.  Someone who will always be a shoulder to cry on and will always keep promises.  Someone whose very existence created the ultimate trust bond. Someone who, without ever looking back, laid his life down for all of humanity so that we could have something and someone to trust.

What would happen if we all trusted Jesus Christ?

You wouldn't fear your secret getting out because you can trust in the unconditional love of Christ.
You wouldn't struggle with making good habits and breaking bad habits because with Christ, anything is possible.
You would be able to let friendships go when the time came without it destroying your world because your world would be Christ.
You would be able to stand tall in the face of your failures and trust that Christ will ALWAYS pick you back up again.
You would be able to throw all of your vulnerabilities on Christ, trusting that He can handle them and turn them into confidence within you.
You would be strong in Christ, and through Christ, and only with Christ because you would have nothing to lose.

But doing that is hard to do.  Actually it's impossible to trust perfectly in Christ, but trying to get closer and closer to complete trust in Christ is what we, as a people, as HIS people, need to be striving for. Only then will we be able to stand up in front of millions and read out from those slips of paper with confidence and humility and utter words of His lips.

I pray that we can throw all of our fears and struggles and heartaches and failures and vulnerabilities and weakness into the bowl and let Christ define us.

That is my prayer.