This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands. In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome, for everyone born of God overcomes the world. 1 John 5: 2-4
Everlasting life is found in Christ. Abundant living is found abiding in the inspired life God breathes through us and throughout our relationships. To love God is to have an authentic appreciation and an esteem for humanity. Jesus emphasizes that true religion and a healthy spiritually is a genuine love for God and for mankind. If God our Father is love, then an outpouring of His love is what has been implanted into our hearts by His Spirit when we declare with our mouths and believe in our hearts that Jesus is Lord. His burden becomes our delight.
What is God’s burden? The answer is uniquely fashioned within each of us as His sons and daughters. He yearns for us to continually discover our identity by embracing a healthy burden for a broken world. In general terms, we know Jesus has a burden for the brokenhearted, for the marginalized, the orphan and for the widow. His heart beats to restore those in misery, in a life of injustice, dividedness, and confusion.
It’s not enough to say “I’m a Christian” and not have a holy burden for the things of God. If we take this stance then we submit to lower quality of life and will find ourselves only partially living, caught in the drudgery of the ordinary. But a life with God is anything but ordinary. The burden Jesus carried led Him to defeat the depths of darkness and overcome death itself. The life He supplies outweighs our weaknesses and the love He offers gives us resurrection power to overcome and empower others in this life.
Jesus pursues us with an unrelenting burden to unleash in us a faith that produces results and transforms our hearts so we can live a life of peace, true joy, and unfailing love. His burden is to bring healing and make known the mystery of God’s great love to all mankind. As we tap into the heart of God’s burden, we will tap into our own purposes toward human flourishing as God pulls out of us the desires and motivations we have inside. Just as God uniquely fashioned us into being, He left a unique imprint of His heart’s burden in each of us to be continually reminded that we are made in His image and to truly discover who we are as His children.
May we hunger for the things of God and intentionally ask Him to receive from Him an unshakeable burden that forms our identity in the here and now. We will receive a burden that does not nourish condemnation, guilt or shame but a burden that motivates and inspires, a God-given burden will lead you to enlarge your territory, magnify your faith into new discoveries and will fan into greater flame the gifts God has imparted to you. Ask our Father to free you to dream bigger and ask largely of our God.
Wait on the Lord with expectancy and step out in faith to declare His Word to be true for you and yours. He is able to do exceedingly, above and beyond what we could imagine or think. He is able and faithful to do it!
Prayer: I want to know your heart Lord. I want to pursue you as you pursue me. Let me know your heart so I can have a burden for this generation. Give me an authentic love for your people so I can see your love working as the healing salve needed for restoration and transformation. May breakthrough come, a greater wave of love for You. May your burden be my delight! Amen.
Additional verses: Jn. 3:36; Jn. 15:9; Jm. 1:27; 1 Jn. 4:8; Ro. 5:5; Ro. 10:9; Eph. 3:20; Is. 61:1-2
