“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”   ~Matthew 11:28-30

Does God cause all the storms in our lives? Is it really God who creates these messes we find ourselves in over and over, or are we to blame? Honestly, after a lifetime of messing up, I totally understand that it is never God, but rather me that is to blame. It is when I take things into my own hands and try to force my own agenda that's the cause all of this turmoil! 

God is the one that removes these burdens from me, when I ask Him to that is. Nevertheless, if I keep stubbornly plugging along regardless of the signs He might be giving me—keep trying to force my fate no matter how badly things might be going—He will allow me to reap the bitter results of these undesirable consequences.

However, if I let go of trying to do it all by myself, die to my self-sufficiency and self-centered will, and ask Him for help and guidance, He will rescue me from myself. Things will suddenly start to turn around, and I will receive peace in the storm rather than frustration. Why? Because His yoke is easy, and His burden is light. In other words, if He’s the one carrying the load, all we have to do is walk alongside Him and enjoy the journey . . . knowing that His will for us is always better than ours!

“Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel: “I am the Lord your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you by the way you should go. Oh, that you had heeded My commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.”   ~Isaiah 48:17-18

We try, with everything we have, to make things work out the way we want them to. But what we don’t realize is that in the very act of trying to do it ourselves, we are bumping God! We are, by our actions, saying, “God, I’ve got this, I can do this thing all by myself!” This, my friend, is the very definition of vanity!

​“For what has man for all his labor, and for the striving of his heart with which he has toiled under the sun? For all his days are sorrowful, and his work burdensome; even in the night his heart takes no rest. This also is vanity.”   ~Ecclesiastes 2:22-23

​Vanity is the admiration of our own reflection; the self-centered pride of ourselves—our looks, our accomplishment, etc. The Biblical definition of vanity is: futile and meaningless; absurdity, frustration, and futility.

So, by these very definitions, we are causing our own frustrations by thinking we can do anything of any spiritual significance without involving Almighty God!

​“Then I looked on all the works that my hands had done and on the labor in which I had toiled; and indeed all was vanity and grasping for the wind. There was no profit under the sun.”   ~Ecclesiastes 2:11

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