"Follow me and let the dead bury their dead"

Quit looking for trouble, it will find you

Matthew 8:18-22

"Follow me and let the dead bury their dead"

Lord,

This has confused me until I heard someone say that the dead in Christ are the dead and you are asking that disciple to follow him and don’t be concerned for the dead. But that still doesn’t make sense. Are we not supposed to lead the dead to you?

Not at the cost of not following me yourself. Following me comes first. The rest will take care of itself.
That makes perfect sense, Lord. You have to be the focus of everything I do. I get caught up in the peripherals and lose my focus, my purpose, my reason for everything.

Lord, that has kept me in an endless loop of straying ‘out there’, looking around ‘out there’, looking for problems to fix ‘out there’ instead of focusing on you, on the path that I am one and allowing whatever you want me to work on to come to me. I have been impatient and gone looking for trouble and in doing so I always find it. Lord, what is my problem?

You are overzealous in your attempt to be perfect an to ‘knock’ it all out. You fail to remember why you are doing it all and you miss the point. You don’t have to go looking for trouble, defects, and shortcomings. They will come looking for you when it’s time for you to face them. When you have the grace and the tools to deal with them. Do not worry that you will run out of problems or what you call personal defects to work on. You won’t but you are taking on too many unnecessarily and you are overloading yourself in a way that brings you stress and a sense o failure. That is not what I want for you. I want peace, love and joy for you and you cannot get that when you are constantly seeking turmoil. You are so driven that you are rejecting my gifts of peach love and joy. You do not take time for it. And that is rejecting my gifts, which doesn’t make me happy. So your quest to fix it all now is actually counterproductive. In your effort to please me, to finish ahead of time you are not doing what is pleasing to me. You are not fulfilling my will for you at that time.

He took the child by the hand and said to her, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!”

Letting go is scary

Mark 5:21-24, 35-43

He took the child by the hand and said to her, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!”

What?

Look at the miracle itself.

Lord, you are taking me by the hand and asking me or telling me to rise. You are saving me from the death that has consumed me for so long. You are holding out your hand to me and I am refusing to take it. Why Lord, why am I refusing?

Trust, you don’t trust. You are still afraid to let go of what is holding you down. You know it has a hold on you, but you are afraid of the unknown. You have to let go of the ‘known” to receive the unknown. The unknown is life, a life you have never allowed yourself to have, a life I want to give you. My heart aches for you, the pain that you hold on to. When will you allow me to hold you, guide you, love you and take care of you?

Lord, I want it now but the fear is still stronger. Help me let it go. I am holding on so tight that my knuckles are white. Lord you have permission to pry it out of my hands if that is what it takes.