Pleasing God, Making Disciples of Jesus Christ

Some Burdens He Will Not Remove

2 KINGS 13:22-23 – Now Hazael king of Syria oppressed Israel all the days of Jehoahaz. But the LORD was gracious to them and had compassion on them, and he turned toward them, because of his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them, nor has he cast them from his presence until now.

THEME OF THE DAY. SOME BURDENS HE WILL NOT REMOVE. It is true. We may pray and pray and pray for God to remove a burden from our lives, take away a difficult situation, or extract a specific thorn in our flesh; and He won’t. He didn’t for the Apostle Paul – “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10). He also didn’t in today’s scripture. His people felt the heavy hand of oppression from the King of Syria and God did not remove it.

Now we need to understand a couple of things about this mysterious work of God not removing our burdens. First, this is not an indication of His displeasure with us. Not at all. In fact, it is the opposite. He won’t remove certain things in our lives because He loves us. That leads to the second thing to understand about this strange, seemingly cruel, work of God in us. He knows what is best. He knows not removing things we ask Him to remove would not be in our best interest and for the furthering of His glory. Okay. With that introduction, let’s consider three reasons why God won’t remove certain heavy burdens in our lives, even when we plead for Him to do so like the Apostle Paul.

God will not remove our burdens because to do so will make us less dependent upon Him and His grace. Do we know the most dangerous times in the Christian life? When things are easy. When the bills are paid, the kids are obedient, the job is secure, peace abounds in our families and churches, watch out. It is “burden-less” times that Christians are more prone to independence and self-sufficiency. And both of those are the two chief ingredients to produce a backslider. And God in His love will leave the burdens on so we would stay dependent on Him and His all-sufficient grace.

Another reason why God will often leave thorns in our flesh and heavy burdens on our hearts is to wean us from the world. Nothing so deepens a longing for heaven and to be with Jesus than to feel the weight of living in a fallen world. Burdened Christians are yearning for heaven Christians, not just to be relieved of their burdens, but to see and embrace the eternal burden-bearer, the Lord Jesus.

And a final reason why our prayers to be relieved or delivered from our burdens go unanswered is to draw us closer to the Lord in real spiritual fellowship. We learn to really know God when the fire of affliction is upon our hearts. We learn how to pray as Jesus did when the burdens of life seem ready to crush us. There are levels of closeness to the Lord Jesus that can only be experienced by the burdened Christian. And when this deep fellowship occurs in the hard and suffering times of burden-carrying, we won’t want Him to remove them for the joy we have by carrying them.

It is okay to ask God to relieve our burdens and remove our thorns in the flesh, but don’t complain or rebel when He says, “No, my grace is sufficient for you.” And in the long run, we will be glad He didn’t as we draw nearer and nearer to Him through the burdens.

PRAYER: “Father, for the times you tell me, ‘No, my grace is sufficient for you’, help me to gladly surrender to that truth.”

QUOTE: “God will not remove all burdens in our lives and that is good. It deepens our trust in His grace when He doesn’t.”