I know that all of us have felt overwhelmed at one time or another in our lives. We get an influx of information that we don’t know what to do with. We have so much on our plate that we don’t know where to begin. And I feel like this not only happens with our everyday lives, but our spiritual lives as well.
Recently at my job I was a part of a meeting wherein another team wanted to hand off some of the things they were working on because they were getting too (wait for it….) overwhelmed. I knew that my team should be taking over those responsibilities anyways, and we had the capacity, so I knew that us taking those on was the right thing. The next part in that process, however, is setting everything up and starting that transition process. I left that meeting feeling so incredibly anxious, because I had just gotten a huge influx of information and I didn’t know what the next step was. I have always been like that, even in college when I was assigned a project or paper. I would freak out immediately because I was looking at everything all at once, but as soon as I took a step back, made a plan of action, and took the first step, things were not so bad. And that’s exactly what I needed to do with this project at work. When I was praying that night, I was asking the Lord for help: peace to be calm and no longer anxious, and the wisdom to know what next steps to take to accomplish the task. Once I took that step back, determined my goal, and then determined the steps I needed to reach that goal, I felt much better. It took taking that step back and realizing I could do it for me to be able to move forward.
I feel like this can be super relatable in our spiritual lives as well. We have the Bible, this incredible source of information on how to live and who we are living for, but there are so many commands and lists of things we should be doing that it can get very overwhelming (especially for a new Christian) if you try to do all of those things all the time everyday. But God does not expect our limited human minds to remember and perfectly execute every command every time. He knows that we need his wisdom and reminders daily of what he asks us to do. We do need to have an understanding of what God shares with us in Scripture, and should also be consistently in the Word to keep ourselves fresh with the things God wants to share with us. However, on a daily basis, we have the Holy Spirit to help us in those moments when we forget or get overwhelmed. He is our helper, and that means more than a helper in hard times. We need to daily surrender ourselves to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and be willingly and humbly obedient. Then we should be able to have an understanding of what God calls us to do in that moment.
The Christian life does not have to be overwhelming. It will definitely be challenging and have it’s ups and downs, but it does not have to be something you feel like you are not capable of having or doing. You don’t have to be overwhelmed in anything, because in everything you have the Holy Spirit as your faithful helper!
“Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take” (Proverbs 3:6)
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