We all have our own buckets of responsibilities and God has indeed strengthened us to carry them. BUT sometimes we carry an extra fish bowl in our hands along with all the baggage on our back! Just imagine you climbing a hill with heavy luggage and trying so hard to keep the water and the gold fish inside the bowl! Oh! All the wobbling and the dabbling! Slipping and the spilling! And we say “Oh! I love my goldie boy! He’s the best gold fish in the whole world!”. Well I’m hinting about the unwanted burden that we are carrying, the unwanted gold fish that we’re trying to keep alive knowing that we are too weak to handle it.
Shall we identify those gold fish bowls one by one?
Bowl no. 1 : Forgetting your strength
This may sound a little weird but forgetting our strength will only lead to focus on our weakness and waste time on it instead of investing time on your strength. I’m not talking about the character weaknesses we have. For instance, if a person is short tempered, he certainly needs to work on it. In fact character weaknesses are not weaknesses they are called “sins”. Yes! I just used the “S”-word “S-I-N”! Well coming to the point, weaknesses are the areas where we are not gifted with.
For many years I dreamed of becoming a guitarist. Even when I see a shuttle racket I used to treat it as a guitar and just strum it with a weird smile on my face! 😀 God had graciously gifted me to sing, compose and write lyrics to be used for His glory, but for my greedy heart that was not enough. I wanted to learn guitar, forgetting about my short fingers which just wouldn’t fit into the frets of the guitar! And that guitar-mummy is still sleeping inside her pyramid. Wasting energy on the things that you’re not gifted will be an unwanted burden! When we do something that we are gifted with it will not be burdensome but joyous.
II Timothy 1:6a says, “For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God”
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try anything that you are not good at. If God leads you, obey. But don’t waste the time that you are supposed to be spending on what you are good at on something that you are not just because others are doing it. Never underestimate or be ashamed of your talent.
I Timothy 4:14a says, “Do not neglect your gift, which was given you”
Bowl no. 2 : Not doing out of love
Many try so hard to impress others without love as the driving force. Some do it to feel loved, few to get a ‘friend-in-need’ and many polish the apples to get acquainted with influential people. If anything’s done without love as a motivator it adds extra weight making everything heavy. Sometimes even your eyelids can get heavy that they become too droopy to open and see the truth! On the other hand love makes things light! The joy of doing something out of love adds extra energy to get it done! A nursing mother is able to take care of her cranky cry-a-lot child amidst all the sleepless nights and a frail body is because she loves her child.
1 Corinthians 16:14 says, “Do everything in love.”
The world has portrayed Love falsely as a burdensome act! Let us stop doing anything in order get something in return. It will be burdensome. Love gives courage! Love brings joy! Let’s do everything out of pure selfless love and we’ll see the burden lifted!
Bowl no. 3 : Not willing to say “NO”
We the beloved children of God think that it’s wrong to say “No” and this has brought a lot of stress on people. When David was willing to battle with Goliath, Saul asked David to wear Saul’s armour. However David was not comfortable wearing it as he was not used to it. He boldly said “No”. It’s not so easy to be offered by the King to wear king’s armour. This could’ve been David’s chance to show off in front of his unloving brothers who are soldiers under Saul. But he didn’t care about pleasing the king and be show-boaty. He simply said “I can’t go in these”.
1 Samuel 17:39 says, David fastened on his sword over the tunic and tried walking around, because he was not used to them. “I cannot go in these,” he said to Saul, “because I am not used to them.” So he took them off.
Let’s not forget that we’ll never fit into someone else’s armour. It’s better to carry familiar catapult and stones, than unfamiliar armour.
Dear pal,
What is that goldfish bowl that you are carrying? Kiss goodbye to it today and live a life of lesser stress and burden. Unless you let down unwanted weights you can never move faster in life.