Bearing Burdens | Crosstraining 4.1.15

Galatians 6:2-6 When I was in High School, I really enjoyed being on the weightlifting team. We would go lift weights 4-5 days a week and have a couple of meets toward the end of the year. What made weightlifting fun was getting to hang out in the weight room with the other guys. Everyone would cheer other people on as they were trying for a new personal best or challenge you when they saw you were going half way. It was also nice to have someone there to spot you. That is, someone there to make sure you weren’t going to crush yourself under this weight you were trying to lift. Your spot would be there to help lift off the weight if you couldn’t quite finish lifting it. There were countless times when I needed someone to help me lift the weight up because it was just too heavy for me. While you could get seriously injured lifting weights without someone to spot you, we all also need someone to spot us in our life. So many of us try to power through life on our own. We want to prove we can make it without anyone else’s help. But, God created us to need other people. There are things we will face in our life that are just too much for us to face on our own. The good news is that you don’t have to try to lift all the weight that’s bearing down on you in your life by yourself. God has placed people around you to help you with that weight. Not only do we need people to spot us in the daily struggles we face, it’s also our responsibility to do the same for others. Every one of us have people around us that we see or talk to all the time who are struggling under the weight of their circumstances. God calls us to help bear the burdens of the people in our life. We should be there for those people and help keep them from failing under it. They may not be strong enough to handle their situation on our own, but God has put us in their life to help bear their burden. // TWO-A-DAYS // GO A LITTLE FARTHER WITH YOUR DAILY DEVOTIONS // Go through these questions with your spouse, kids, or friend, or you can even journal about the answers to these questions:

1. What was the best part of your day?
2. What was the toughest part of your day?
3. Where did you mess up today?
4. Where did you see God today?

Reflect: Has anyone ever helped you handle the weight of a situation in your life that you couldn’t handle on your own? What did that mean to you, and how did it help you along? Pray: Spend a few minutes asking God who around you is buckling under a heavy burden that you can help them with this week. READ THROUGH THE NEW TESTAMENT: Today’s Reading: Galatians 6]]>