The Weight That Was Never Yours to Carry: Why Your Obedience is Enough
Let me tell you about the bricks.
I don’t mean the ones building houses in the new developments sprouting around Pretoria. I mean the other kind. The invisible, soul-crushing bricks we mortar together with our own anxiety and stack, one by one, onto the narrow shelf of our shoulders. The brick of a child’s future in a shaky economy. The brick of a family member’s salvation. The brick of a ministry’s success, a nation’s healing, a personal dream’s fulfilment. We walk through the malls of Sandton and the dusty streets of our townships stooped under this private architecture of worry, convinced that if we don’t carry it, the whole structure will collapse.
My friends, I say this with the fierce compassion of one who has built his own back-breaking burdens: you are carrying the weight of a department that was never yours to manage. Your shoulders are not that broad. Your assignment is obedience; the result is His department.
The Modern Marketplace of Anxieties
Just this past weekend, as a thunderstorm brewed over Akasia, darkening the skies with its ominous promise, another storm of violence erupted in Saulsville. The news reports were sterile: a shooting, 11 killed, 14 wounded, a child among them. But we know the truth. In homes across our city, from Akasia to Atteridgeville, that news became another brick. A brick of fear: “Is anywhere safe?” A brick of anger: “When will it end?” A brick of helplessness: “What can I possibly do?” We see the brokenness—in our politics, our power grids, our communities—and we instinctively reach down to gather the fragments, believing it is our sacred duty to glue the vase of the world back together.
We do it in our personal lives, too. We scroll through social media, a digital tapestry of curated success from the Africa Tech Festival in Cape Town to the glittering lifestyles of influencers, and we feel the brick of comparison. We lie awake, running financial calculations that never quite add up, holding the brick of provision. We pray fervently for a wayward son or daughter, clenching the brick of their destiny in our white-knuckled fists, as if our faith, not God’s grace, is the ultimate binding force.
This is the great heresy of burdened hearts: the quiet belief that our faithfulness is measured by our fretfulness. That a good Christian is a worried Christian. We have confused stewardship with ownership, prayer with control, and obedience with omnipotence.
A Personal Parable: The Day I Dropped the Bricks
Let me be painfully transparent. For years, I carried a specific, polished set of bricks labelled “My Ministry’s Impact.” Every lukewarm response to an altar call was a crack in my brick. Every financial shortfall chipped a corner. I preached about God’s sovereignty while privately auditing His performance, my spirit a tense boardroom where I was both anxious manager and dissatisfied shareholder.
The breaking point came not in a dramatic failure, but in a quiet township visit. I was distributing food parcels, my mind already burdened with the logistics for the next ten outreaches, mentally calculating how to scale this “success.” An elderly gogo, her face a beautiful map of wrinkles, took my hand. She didn’t ask about our next program. She simply said, “Baie dankie, mfundisi. Thank you for seeing me today. God is good.”
In that moment, the Holy Spirit spoke with surgical clarity: “Harold, she is not a metric on your dashboard. She is my daughter. You brought the parcel. I brought the joy. Which is heavier?” I walked back to my car feeling strangely, unnervingly light. I had left the bricks of outcome on the dusty ground next to her shack. For the first time, I understood the terrifying, glorious freedom of the Psalm: “Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you” (Psalm 55:22). The verb ‘cast’ is violent, final—a decisive heaving away.
The Unshakeable Logic of Surrender: Jesus, the Philosopher-King
Now, some may call this piety—a sweet, simple sentiment for the simple-minded. This is where we must move from devotional comfort to intellectual conviction. We must reclaim Jesus Christ not only as Saviour but as the Supreme Philosopher, the architect of a reality where surrender is strength.
Ancient thinkers like the Stoics sought peace through rigid self-control; the Epicureans through the avoidance of pain. Jesus presented a radical, third way: peace through entrusted dependence. His teachings form a coherent philosophical system where the fundamental axiom is a loving, sovereign Father. If that axiom is true—if God is both omnipotent and benevolent—then all logical conclusions flow toward trust, not anxiety.
Consider His crystalline logic in Matthew 6:
“Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Matthew 6:26-27).
This is not a whimsical analogy. It is a philosophical argument from greater to lesser (a fortiori), a staple of sound reasoning. The structure is impeccable:
1. Major Premise: God providentially cares for His lesser creations (birds).
2. Minor Premise: You, as a human made in His image, are of greater value to God than birds.
3. Conclusion: Therefore, you can logically and confidently expect God’s providential care for you.
Anxiety, in Jesus’ philosophical framework, is not just a feeling; it is a category error. It is the practical atheism of living as if the minor premise is false. It is acting as if you are of lesser value, or as if God is of lesser faithfulness.
The Cultural Confrontation: Dismantling the Altar of Hustle
Here in our African context, we face a specific stronghold that compounds this burden: the cult of hustle and hyper-responsibility. We wear busyness as a badge of honour. We glorify the narrative of the self-made man or woman, the one who “pulls themselves up by their bootstraps.” This ethos, often dressed in the language of faith and “divine hustle,” can subtly poison our theology. It makes outcomes idols and turns our obedience into a transaction—a down payment we expect God to match with our desired return.
We must sound the alarm against this! The Gospel declares we are not self-made; we are Christ-remade. Our primary identity is not builder but beloved child. When the Apostle Paul stood in Athens, he confronted the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers not by endorsing their self-sufficient frameworks, but by proclaiming a God who “gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). He declared a dependence that is our dignity.
What is the practical, tangible shape of laying down this burden?
1. Define Your Domain: Write down the things that are keeping you awake at night. Now, draw a line. On one side, list every item that falls under the clear, biblical command of your stewardship (e.g., pray for my child, work diligently at my job, love my neighbour). On the other side, list every item that is an outcome (e.g., my child’s salvation, a promotion, my neighbour’s conversion). Your domain is the first list. God’s department is the second. Your prayer shifts from “God, achieve this outcome” to “God, empower my obedience in this matter. The outcome is yours.”
2. Embrace the Ministry of the Mundane: We think we must move mountains. God often asks us to simply move a spoon—to feed one hungry person, to write one encouraging note, to pray one sincere prayer. Faithfulness is found in the fidelities of the daily, not the fireworks of the dramatic.
3. Cultivate a Sabbath Heart: Sabbath is not just a day; it is a declaration. It is a weekly, lived-out proverb that screams, “The world continues without my frantic labour! God is on the throne!” Practice stopping. In the silence, you will hear the comforting sound of the universe running perfectly well on His power, not yours.
The Liberating Truth
The world says, “Carry more.” The culture says, “Hustle harder.” The enemy whispers, “It all depends on you.” But the Scriptures thunder a different word: “Cease striving, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).
You were never meant to be the architect of outcomes, straining under the blueprint of providence. You are called to be a faithful bricklayer in the kingdom, using the materials of obedience He supplies, one day at a time. You lay the brick of kindness. He decides what house it builds. You sow the seed of the Word. He governs the harvest.
So today, feel the weight on your shoulders. Name each brick. And then, with the deliberate trust that flows from the logic of the Gospel and the power of the Spirit, do the most counter-cultural, revolutionary, and faithful thing you can do.
Lay it down.
Cast that care upon Him, for He truly, eternally, and perfectly cares for you. Walk in the freedom of faithfulness, and release the anxiety of the outcome. Your Father, the great Philosopher-King, is managing His department with flawless, loving, sovereign skill. Your only task is to trust the Manager.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3HA0AURevvkXjOmPz849t9?si=aa5RpgHpQcOf2sN5svnFAA
Comments
Post a Comment