(August 2, 2009)

God has some powerful things for us when we come together on Sundays. God can shake our church, our communities, our schools if we pray for Him to do so. God wants us to pray with passion.

On every journey, you have to have some baggage. The parallels are very similar to emotional baggage, physical baggage and spiritual baggage. (Pray for John: he used to wear a fanny pack.) Sometimes, trying to drag the baggage throughout the airport or up the escalator is very difficult. Tripping over baggage is almost inevitable. However, once your baggage is checked in or is loaded under the bus, you walk through the terminal is swift and even liberating. Carrying a bunch of baggage or a little bit of baggage is you choice.

We check out bags at the departure point, but we always pick it back up when we arrive. Do you know that God doesn't want us to claim our bags when we arrive? He wants us to check in our baggage, never to claim it again. Why do we want to hold on to it? Why do some people even want to make all of their baggage carry-on?

Some people work hard to make their baggage easier to carry. Some people try to jam all of their baggage into a smaller bag so it can be loaded in the overhead compartment. Sometimes we find baggage that has more pockets and zippers so we can load more baggage into it. Some people even try to have attractive baggage: color-coordinated, paisleys, floral prints, steel-encased. Regardless, somewhere on our journey, we picked up some baggage: hurt, rejection, shame, disappointment, addiction, false expectations we put on ourselves, living up to the expectations of others. Our reactions over our lifespan depend on the baggage that we decided to pick up over time.

Jesus never designed us to carry around baggage, carrying that around day in and day out. God says for us to basically come to Him and take a break. It must be tired for us to carry some of the burdens we have. He wants us to take a spiritual rest and then take something up. He wants us to "take My yoke upon you." Once this happens, you and God become a team and it becomes easy to move beyond your issues...He carries the baggage, you move beyond.

When we become yoked to the sail, we catch the wind of His Spirit. We become co-laborers with God; we are yoked together. It's His power, it's the Power of the Holy Spirit that yokes you together, making you co-laborers. Isn't that awesome? You aren't doing it by yourself, so why would you want to?

When you are yoked together with Jesus, you can now see clearly the destination. Therefore, you can call that destination into existence. You can't do that if you are carrying all of the baggage yourself.

Jesse Stoner said once that "the best way to predict the future is to create it." You have a choice, when you carry baggage, it's the baggage that creates your future. However, if you turn that baggage over to God, you now can create your future with Him because you are not bound by the limitations that you have now.

- Jon Bruney