God Will Carry Us

How have you learned to let God carry you? Xochitl Dixon shares her lesson.

Elisa

God Will Carry Us

By Xochitl Dixon

I carried the overflowing basket of dirty laundry into the garage, letting the door slam shut behind me. As I set the heavy load on top of the washer, some of the clothes spilled out. Physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually depleted, I sat on the cement floor with my back against the cold machine. “Fine,” I said. “I give up.” Muffling my sobs with a damp towel, I accepted Jesus as my Savior.

A few weeks earlier, a pastor at a church I’d been visiting for months had held up his Bible during the sermon. He said, “Don’t take my word for it, read God’s Word for yourself.”

I took a Bible home that day in December 2001. As I read through the Gospel of John, God stripped away decades of lies I had believed about him and myself. I took the words Jesus said in John 15:5 literally: “If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.”

So, I asked God to be my strength and depended on him for everything.

Until I didn’t.

And in 2018 after a cross-country move, then again on January 14, 2022, when I woke up unable to walk, I definitely didn’t.

But even when I lugged loads God never intended for me to carry, he showered me with compassion. He reminded me that he made me, knows me, loves me, and carries me every moment of every day.

I don’t know how I kept forgetting the extent of God’s love for me before he placed me in my mother’s womb. I’m not sure how I distorted my identity as God’s chosen one time after time. I can’t explain why I kept rejecting his right to rule as my Maker and lead as my Helper. I can’t figure out why I repeatedly failed to focus on God’s purpose over my own, either.

Over the years, I wore myself out, rushed past God, used all my strength to level the mountains of obstacles before me. I tried busting through gates God never intended me to enter. I walked by faith in my abilities, counting on my strength, even though I knew I could do nothing without God.

But as I spent that January night alone in the hospital, unable to walk in my own strength, I surrendered to God’s gentle embrace. As I rested in the Holy Spirit’s constant presence, he empowered me to pray, encourage the people he sent to care for me, and hand out the Our Daily Bread booklets my husband brought me from home. While flat on my back in that hospital bed, God enabled me to rest in him, rely on him, and write the first chapter of a devotional I’d been praying over for years.

Through this experience, the Spirit of God carried me out of the pit of self-sufficiency, which is a form of idolatry.

The Old Testament prophets warned God’s people to avoid idolatry. When God spoke through the prophet Isaiah, our Creator and Helper called his people “chosen” (Isaiah 44:1-2). He affirmed his right to anoint and use anyone (Isaiah 45:1). He promised to go before his people, to level mountains, break down gates, and cut through iron bars (v. 2). He confirmed his purpose, to make himself known as the one true God who “summons” his people “by name” (v. 3).

Still, the God’s people willingly lived in bondage to man-made idols (Isaiah 46:1-2). But God declared that he “upheld” and “carried” his own since birth (v. 3). He said, “Even in your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you” (v. 4).

The Hebrew word for carry in this verse means to lift up, raise, forgive, as well as to exalt, to have a longing for, and to lead out.*

From the beginning, God planned to save us. And the moment we accept God the Father sent God the Son, Jesus, and the millisecond we receive him as our Savior and Lord, he sends us the Helper ̶ God the Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity ̶ he who dwells in us forever.

While in that hospital bed, God reminded me that I had never been able to totally rely on myself. He gives me life with every breath I take!

No matter how long we’ve been following God, we won’t always trust him to be our strength. We won’t always risk depending on him for everything. We need the Holy Spirit to help us understand how much we need God, and to help us believe him, surrender to him, and depend on him.

But even when we fail to remember and live in these truths, God remains loving, faithful, and good. God is always ready and willing to empower us to embrace our weaknesses and live with confidence in his Word. So, we can take one sacred stride at a time by simply resting in his presence and relying on his power. When we can’t take one more step, we can still trust him, because the Holy Spirit is God with us and in us. He will carry us!

*(The  NIV Exhaustive Bible Concordance: A Better Strong’s Bible Concordance, Third Edition, John R. Kohlenberger III, H5951, nāśā, p. 1443. Michigan: 2015)

Xochitl (So-Cheel) E. Dixon, a disabled Mexican author and speaker, is a contributor for Our Daily Bread, God Hears Her, Tyndale's Go Bible for Kids, and The Message Devotional Bible for Women. Serving Jesus with her diverse family and service dog, Callie, Xochitl crosses multi-generational, multi-ethnic, and multi-cultural lines with messages of God’s love, hope, spiritual growth, discipleship, and prayer. Her most recent book is Sacred Strides: Walking in the Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit. She is also the author of Waiting for God: Trusting Him for the Answers to Every Prayer, and the picture books, What Color is God’s Love?, Wonderfully, Marvelously Brown, Different Like Me, and Diferente como yo. She connects with readers at www.xedixon.com.