Here is a blog I wrote during 2013. It applies as we face the coming year. God promises He will carry us through the new year.
Not along ago I heard for the first time a song that won’t stop going through my mind and coming out of my mouth.
Here’s how the chorus goes. “Carry me, carry me, carry me now/From this sinking sand to Your solid ground./The only way I’m ever gonna make it out/Is if You carry me, carry me, carry me now./God carry me, carry me, carry me now.”
The truth of God’s carrying us through difficult times of our lives was first presented to me in the Footprints poem written by Mary Stevenson. (OK, there’s still controversy, and some say it was written by Margaret Fishback Powers)
Anyway, here are the lines from the poem that brought such truth to my heart years ago when I first read them:
But I noticed that during the most trying periods of my life/there have only been one set of prints in the sand./Why, when I needed you most, you have not been there for me?/The Lord replied,/“The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand,/ is when I carried you.
It was quite awhile after reading the poem that I realized it lines up with the Word of God. Yes, the Bible proclaims that God carries us.
What a comfort that has been to me since I’m a person who for too long mistakenly thought being strong, not needing help, and being able to carry on under my own fortitude was a good and right thing.
What God whispers to my heart from His Word is,
The Lord your God carried you, just as one carries a child all the way that you traveled until you reached this place. Deuteronomy 1:31
And in Isaiah 46:4 He promises something that is dear to me as one who is just on the edge of “old age”:
Even to your old age…and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save. (ESV)
Josh’s song has the words “carry me” as a prayer. And that’s something I haven’t done. I’ve trusted God that He would carry me, and I believe He has. I confess at times I’ve fought His carrying me—like a little child who squirms and fights the loving arms of a parent.
But it also seems a good thing to pray the prayer, “God, carry me,” to remind myself that I have a strong God who is more than able to do so and that I am never in this alone.
What about you? Are you willing to submit to a God who desires to carry you through the difficulties of life? Will you call out to Him today with the simple prayer: “God, carry me?” You might even want to raise up your arms like a little child asking her daddy to hold her. What rest you will experience in your soul.
To hear more about the subject of “God, Carry Me,” listen to my radio show “Hearts Set Free with Elaine on Sunday, December 29, 2013 at 9:00am EST. Tune in on the radio at 1110 AM or listen online by going to www.wtis1110.com and pressing “Listen Live.” Or you can listen to any of my shows in the archives.
Hearts Set Free Blog 