Releasing Last Year's Burdens - Your Nightly Prayer - January 3rd
Releasing Last Year’s Burdens
Your Nightly Prayer
By Lynette Kittle
TONIGHT'S SCRIPTURE
“Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.” - 1 Peter 5:7
SOMETHING TO PONDER
How are we starting out the New Year? Are we full of regret and disappointment from the previous year, or maybe even years or decades? Sometimes it seems like life keeps weighing us down more and more.
Our family has had some tough times through the years, surviving hurricanes, blizzards, loss of loved ones and beloved pets, sicknesses, and more, so we understand how some experiences in life can try to get a grip on us, hanging on for a while, trying to keep us feeling down and unable to move ahead.
After difficult and challenging times, it can be very hard for us to move forward and not drag last year’s burdens along with us into a new year. So what do we do if we are feeling burdened by a rough year, if the troubles have seemed to attach to us?
If so, it’s time for us to surrender the weight of yesterday and release last year’s burdens. It’s time, as the song goes, for us to do what the popular Disney musical Frozen song, “Let It Go,” urges us to do.
We don’t have to carry the weight of last year’s burdens into the New Year, but rather leave those burdens behind and look ahead to the coming year, confidently forgetting, as the Apostle Paul does in Philippians 3:13, “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead.”
God truly does call us to let our burdens go. He doesn’t want us to keep going, over and over, in our minds, last year’s difficulties and troubles or our failings, but rather to free us from the past year, as He urges us in Isaiah 43:18, “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.”
We can release our burdens, confident that God has new things planned for us ahead in the New Year. It’s God’s pleasure and purpose to do new things in our lives, telling us in Isaiah 42:9, “See, the former things have taken place, and new things I declare; before they spring into being I announce them to you.”
As well, again, in Isaiah 43:19, saying, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”
God makes some pretty strong promises in His word, as Psalm 55:22 explains, “Cast your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken.”
YOUR NIGHTLY PRAYER
Dear Father,
Help us to release yesterday’s burdens so that we may look forward to resting in Your care this coming year. Strengthen us to trust You enough to cast our cares on You, believing that You care for us and will be with us in the coming year. Open our hearts to believe You’re making things new in our lives and freeing us from the weight of past burdens. Free our hearts and minds to receive Your ways and will in our lives, so that we may rest freely in Your care.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
Three Things to Meditate Upon
1. How are you at releasing burdens? Is it hard for you to let go of them? If so, why do you think you hang onto them? Are you afraid of letting them go? Does it make you feel like you’re in control to hang onto them?
2. In what ways do you release stress in your life? Do you find release in singing, dancing, painting, exercising, cooking, or something else? If so, find a way to release your burdens through the things you love to do.
3. Make a list of the past year’s burdens that you want to release and cast off to the Lord. After writing them down, attach your list to a helium balloon and let the wind whisk it away, symbolically releasing your burdens into God’s hand and out of your control.
Reflect on tonight’s prayer and share how God met you there. Join the Your Nightly Prayer discussion on the Crosswalk Forum.
Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/Oleksandra Yagello
Lynette Kittle is married with four daughters. She enjoys writing about faith, marriage, parenting, relationships, and life. Her writing has been published by Focus on the Family, Decision, Today’s Christian Woman, kirkcameron.com, Ungrind.org, StartMarriageRight.com, and more. She has a M.A. in Communication from Regent University and serves as associate producer for Soul Check TV.
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