My last post about "
The Burden of the LORD" was, in my opinion, a fairly abstract and vague expression of the feelings and experiences that I've had since Camp Woodmen. One of the many points made in that article that I didn't take the time to elaborate on was the importance of sharing the work of God in your life with others, as I wrote:
Whenever God gives you something useful to share with someone, you should say it... it may be a story of something that happened in your life that speaks to an issue someone is having... it may be sharing how God supplied your needs or worked in your life; it may be a good work that you have done by faith and the benefit that it brought to your life or someone else's; it may be a time when you stood up for something; it may be a time when you didn't stand up for something when you should have. Whatever the case, I found myself, as a counselor, very naturally doing something that was unnatural for me: I was telling people exactly what was in my heart if I had anything at all in mind that I knew would be profitable for them to hear.
A few days after camp ended, in the midst of this epiphany about the "burden of the LORD," I came across something that Paul wrote which really hit me in a new way:
Romans 1:16-17
I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: "The righteous will live by faith."
Why would anyone be ashamed of the gospel? This is something that I didn't even know I struggled with - one more heavy burden that I had put on myself that God was finally lifting.