If you’ve been reading this page, you know that one of God’s most joyful servants just passsed away–Jesse Rotholz. A man in his young 20’s whose life was taken by Hepatitis and cerebral malaria. When told that people were fighting for him in prayer while so very sick, his response was an obvious endorsement of prayer, but that “we rest in the Lord” as a means of fighting. And when I look at his videos, I see a young man of such peace and joy.
Then I look at my own life and see anything but that. Granted, it’s a time of great trial right now and has been for the last several years. But even in this storm, is my heart full of the rest of God, joy and peace?
Then I open this Scripture today:
“Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down with dissipation, drunkenness and the anxieties of life, and that day will close on you unexpectedly like a trap.” Lk 21:34
It’s easy to think that drunkenness and dissipation are problems, but another huge problem is being weighed down by the anxieties of life? That this was a threat that we must be careful about or that day of the Lord will close on us like a trap?
Wow.
That’s a tough pill to swallow.
My heart so easily gets weighed down. Not in a way that feels “anxious” but in a way that is significantly concerned.
But the ways of God are rest, peace and joy.
And if we don’t have these, we can unknowingly be caught in a trap and miss the things of God. Not just little things of God but even the day of his coming.
“Be always on the watch” (v. 36) it says.
If I’m weighed down by the troubles of this life, I cannot be on the watch” (v. 36).
It’s actually quite sobering.
There’s another place in Scripture where the seed falls to the ground. The devil snatches up some of the seed. Other seed doesn’t find root. But we forget that even there one of the seeds is choked by the “worries” of this life. Worries and anxieties can choke our seed to death (Lk 8:14).
These things are like poison slipped into our drinks. We may not taste them, but they are deadly nonetheless.