Baggage

Baggage

As a firefighter, we had to go on field trips. Not the fun kind you went on in school. Our field trips required us to run a mile or so in full turnout gear: bunker suit, air pack, mask, gloves, boots, and helmet. Sometimes it was just part, but often it was all. We ran carrying all this excess weight to help prepare us for our duties as firefighters.

In our world today, we carry around a lot of extra weight.  A lot of baggage.  We’re not preparing for a job, just carrying all this around.  We just don’t know how to let go.

Matthew West’s song, “What If?”, talks about carrying around regrets from your past. My favorite line says, “I refuse to be a should-a-would-a-could-a-been. I can’t go back in time. I don’t have a DeLorean.”  

We can’t change our past, but we can improve our future. The Bible tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:17, “Therefore, if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things become new.”  God gets rid of our baggage, we don’t have to carry it around any longer.  

That doesn’t mean our criminal past is wiped clean. We are still under the laws of our earthly government. But we no longer have to let that define us. We can move ahead and be a witness to others with our changed lives. Let others see how Christ can love anyone. How Christ can use anyone. 

In Acts, we see the story of Paul. Paul, AKA Saul of Tarsus, was a lead persecutor of early Christians. In Acts 9:1, he was “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord.”  But on his way to Damascus to gather them up, “Suddenly, there shone round about him a light from Heaven. A voice fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest me?” (V4) Now that is some heavy baggage, persecuting Christ. But Jesus called him “A chosen vessel unto me, to bear My name before the Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel." That’s a testimony.

But wait, there’s more. Paul wasn’t the only one. John 4 tells us about Jesus stopping at a well in Samaria. He asks for a drink from a local woman. She is shocked and surprised that He speaks to her at all. Jews avoided Samaria and would go out of their way to get around. Jesus deliberately went through Samaria to meet her. Not only does He speak to her, he tells her about her life. He tells her He knows she’s had five husbands and is living with another man that is not her husband.  He unloaded her baggage and used her to lead others in her town to Him.

In Luke 8:2, we see Mary Magdalene, “And a certain woman, which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils.” Wow, that’s a lot of baggage. And she was the first to see the risen Lord.

God tells us to “Take my yoke upon you, and lean on me, for I am meek and lowly in heart; and you shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light, (Matthew 11:29-30). So don’t keep hauling around all that extra weight. Let go and let God have it. Don’t let the world tell you you’re not “good” enough. Don’t think you can’t because… Know that you’ve been made new in Christ. The old is gone. So...

Drop all that baggage you’ve been carrying and walk anew in Christ.