I want to share something I have done over the years and have shared with others that have helped them… burnt offerings, boxes, and bows, ‘dusting’ bumps and bruises, and draw the line.
You might think, burnt offerings, boxes and bows, ‘dustings’ bumps and bruises and draw the line? What does that have to do with anything? With today’s new words such as Covid 19 and Corona Virus being household words with the attending emotions of fear, anxiety, hopelessness. anger and confusion, we all need to find hope in Jesus. These will be tools we can apply to release the despairing thoughts and emotions that rise up with the anxious occurrences.
Today I will share about burnt offerings. In the future weeks, I will share about boxes and bows, ‘dusting’ bumps and bruises, and draw the line.
This will be a series of writings entitled Victory Apps. These applications deal with the places we are in on our journeys of life’s events. Today it seems there is an app for everything. Now we can have a series of four different apps that can contribute to victory in our lives. It’s not something you go online to download. The Apps stand for applications. We must apply them to release our burdens and receive God’s peace. The only thing we ‘download’ is God’s enablement to overcome. They are not hard to understand, otherwise, I couldn’t have done them.
Each Victory App will deal with a specific area of emotional disablement that besieges us. We will have our choice to use one of them, all of them or a combination. Our goal is to get set free from the ‘stuff’ that holds us back from living our lives with purpose, joy, peace, and love. I’ve applied each of them over the years for different purposes not knowing that one day I would share them with you. Let’s all receive His delivering love and know our glorious Lord more!
Burnt Offerings Victory App 1
Burnt Offerings deal with an area in our lives that holds on to us for an EXTENDED period of time.
It can be held within us for months or years. We all go through things, some little, some bad, and then some really bad. We, many times, don’t know what to do with them. We try to think of some way to anesthetize ourselves, to numb out. In severe times, we are tempted to drink, take drugs, have affairs, run away, or worse of all, commit suicide. Even though I know some emotional issues are much more complex than a simple solution and need in-depth counseling, the Lord showed me something I could do during my stresses.
After an extended time of prayer asking what I could do about troubling situations, I felt like the Lord instructed me to write all my concerns on a sheet of paper describing them. It took a long while to actually give words to my intense emotions. I remember so clearly my distraught state of mind. Everything looked so impossible. After I was finished, He then instructed me to give the situations and their impossibilities to Him. I then raised the sheet as though I was handing it to Him and prayed.
The prayers were varied and some had more detail than others depending on the complexity and severity. I will give you examples you might use for your lives. We are all in this together and our lives and concerns are alike in many ways.
We all want good for our families and hope for our futures. You, of course, will have your own words and examples.
An example might be, “Lord I give to you_____________ . Please help me with my feelings of _____________. I need Your help in order to release them since I’ve carried this for so long. I don’t want them because they are weighing me down and they certainly don’t give You glory. All I know to do is release them to You the best I can and give this whole mess to You. I long to be free but, I haven’t known how. I didn’t even know I could give these things over to you. Thank You for loving me and taking this burden I’ve carried for so long. I want to know and love you more. In Jesus’ name Amen.” (You can add to the prayer with your heart concerns and insert what your particular feelings are be it fear, anxiety, anger, hurt, abandonment, failure, victimization, loneliness, sorrow, despair, or unworthiness to name a few).
After my extended prayer of releasing the care and burdens, I was then to roll my sheet up (a sheet of computer paper) and light a match to it, signifying they were His now and I was not to carry them any longer. Of course, the place I burned them was a safe place where nothing else could burn.
After I did as He instructed, I decided to retrieve the ashes of my concerns and place them in small containers. I identified what I had released to the Lord on a small piece of masking tape attaching it on the lid describing the harassing emotions; such as “Past Memories, Worth/Value, Fear of Man, Addiction to/for Approval, Children and their Spouses to name a few. Some were so private, I didn’t even put a tab on them. But, I knew He knew
I tell you of these memories because we all are subject to harassment. You will have your own burnt offerings because our lives are different but the same in so many ways.
I did as the Lord instructed me whenever I felt my emotions were assaulted using the small containers and attaching the tape to them. Then when the plaguing thoughts would return, I would look at my container and say, “No, the burdens are in there. I’ve given them to the Lord! He is taking care of them.” The scripture tells us ‘casting the whole of your care (all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns, once and for all) on Him, for He cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully’. 1 Peter 5:7(AMP)
I did my burnt offerings to the Lord over the years, assembling a small box of them. When my husband and I shared with others, it became a visual for them to understand. One woman decided to write her sorrow on a small sheet of paper recounting the death of her brother many years earlier, tearing it up in small pieces and throwing them into the ocean. I related to her pain because of my grief of many years ago, when I was younger, of my brother (best friend) being killed in a car traveling on a highway in Illinois. There were others who decided to bury their burnt offerings in the ground. Others kept their ashes in a small container like I did.
Really, where we release the burdens can be our own choosing. The whole idea is we do as l Peter 5:7 exhorts. This is a way to let go of our negative ‘stuff’ releasing it to the Lord. He waits and receives all we give to Him. He loves us beyond our understanding and died for us to be free. By the way, after reading what I am relaying to you, my husband and I did another burnt offering about a troubling concern needing answers… Life continues!
©TEXT & PHOTOGRAPHY, NEW VENTURE ARTS
Featured Image by David Monje on Unsplash
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