A Pretty Awesome Deal

Matthew 21:12 says, "Then Jesus went into the temple of God and drove out all those who bought and sold in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves" (NKJV).

It's interesting to me that this is also how Jesus fixes the issues within you. I was reading a lot of interrelated and not related stuff today that started to make sense to me after a minute. Hopefully you can follow me. I started with Matthew 9:25, which says, "But when the crowd was put outside, He went in and took her by the hand and the girl arose." I loved it! God will come in and take your hand and you'll come up from you death bed. Often when we're going through issues in life we think we're in that valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4), but God will guide us through it. Even when the world says that you're as good as dead, Jesus knows better because He sees past this moment when you're in the valley. He pushes the world away from you, which is why when we are in a period of trial we are often isolated, so that He can work on us and lift us out and no one can say it was anyone but Him.

There are other times that Jesus took someone by the hand and lifted them out from their place that was like death. Matthew 8:3, Matthew 8:15, Mark 1:31, Matthew 9:29-30, and Matthew 14:31. However, when Christ comes into your life, you need to be ready for Him to shake some stuff up and break some stuff. He's going to heal your hurt, sickness, pain, etc. and bring you up, but just like after you have the flu, you need to clean house. When Christ cleans house in the temple that is you, some of that stuff is going to be broken. Most likely you've built walls here and there that you think will help keep your temple ceiling up, but in Matthew 24:1-2, Jesus said all of the stones making the walls will come down. No question about it, those walls are going to break. Well, when something breaks, a bunch of pieces are going to be left and they can't stay there. You've got to sweep them away or they'll just collect and turn into a big mess and probably hurt your feet, plus you can't be walking around like a big mess on the inside. If you're a big old mess, you won't be able to function in your purpose correctly or move forward because you'll just keep tripping on the pieces and getting hurt all over again. You've got to sweep those pieces out. How? You've got to praise them out. Praise the broken pieces of your past issues out of your life.

You've got some major construction and renovation going on in you all by the hand of Christ. He's got to do some heavy lifting because you're going to get tired of holding those bricks up and pushing them around so just let Him push them out of your life. You cannot do it, at least not alone. Christ doesn't have any heavy issues, I mean He's God. What issues would He have? Anyway, He's willing to trade His lack of issues with you for your mess (Matthew 8:2; 11:29-30) if you are. Sounds like a pretty great deal to me :) In order to take His burden--which is nothing--you have to give Him yours because fighting to hand it over will just cause you to topple. How do you give your issues to Him? Praise, worship, prayer, and fasting. You see the funny thing about trading burdens is that you get a whole lot of awesome things instead like peace, joy, comfort, rest, and hope among other things. Why not try trading?