How to Stop Rummaging Through Life and Start Walking by Faith

Life can be quite challenging. As we walk through our days we have countless thoughts, emotions and situations to deal with. We also have something called our past experiences which like to pop up and impact our day as well. As we walk through life, we tend to focus on all of this and lose sight of the person walking through life with us: Jesus.

Which makes the following verse quite challenging:

For we walk by faith, not by sight. 2 Corinthians 5:7 NASB

As Paul reminds us, we walk through life with Jesus with the trust and confidence that He has our problems covered, even when we can’t see the solutions.

Every challenging moment we experience in life is also a self-reflective moment that asks us “Is the rubber meeting the road?” Are we placing our trust and confidence in Jesus, or are we losing sight of Him as we focus on life’s challenges?

Because as we will see in the next passage, declaring that we have trust and confidence in God, and walking with God in faith are two different things.

The Importance of Continually Walking by Faith

What use is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and be filled,” yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? In the same way, faith also, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself. James 2:14-17 NASB

This passage is often misunderstood, so allow me to paraphrase it with a different context and an illustration.

What good is it if I have trust and confidence in my ability to walk, but I don’t walk? Would I still be able to walk?

I’ve learnt the answer to these questions through painful experience. Nearly 10 years ago I was in a horrific car accident, which resulted in multiple injuries including a broken right femur and humerus. To repair the break in my femur, the surgeons had to cut through my hip tendons and insert a metal rod. I spent days in a hospital bed before the physiotherapist tried to mobilise me. I knew that because of my injuries walking would be difficult, but I had no idea how much harder it had become. I now struggled to walk 20m before nearly collapsing. A week prior to my accident I had successfully hiked up and down a mountain. My trust and confidence in my ability to walk started to fade rapidly.

After I was discharged, I started to slowly regain my strength, but it was a slow process. Instead of walking 500m in a matter of minutes, I would be lucky to walk 50m. Each time, I started to walk, I would fatigue, and my stride would get shorter and shorter, until I was barely able to put one foot in front of the other.

This experience taught me an important lesson. That having trust and confidence in one's ability to walk is worthless if one doesn’t walk, because their ability to walk will soon be dead.

So, it is with our faith. We can believe we have trust and confidence in God, but unless we walk by faith throughout every day, our faith weakens. The only way to strengthen our faith, is by continually walking with God and placing our trust and confidence in Him every day. The rubber must meet the road.

Where I live there are no foot paths, so when people go for a walk, they tend to walk on the road. I sometimes like to put a weight vest on when I go for a walk to help strengthen my muscles. Of course, you need the right amount of weight. Just enough to increase your strength, but not so much that walking becomes too difficult.

When we try to walk through life by faith, we tend to carry on our backs far too much weight. The result is that our ability to walk by faith is weakened, sometimes to the point that we can’t walk forward with Jesus at all.

I like to refer to this extra weight that we carry around with us as the Backpack of Life.

The Backpack of Life

Everyone carries around the Backpack of Life. Everyone’s backpack is unique, but they all contain the same four things:

• Our Current Situations

• Our Emotions

• Our Past

• Our Thoughts

This is because for as long as we are alive, there will always be a new situation to encounter. Every situation produces an emotional response that communicates something to us about each situation. These situations will always be replaced by new ones which increases the volume of the past experiences we carry with us. Which means we can’t escape out thoughts, because God designed our brains to be thought factories to help us to consider our past and present situations from different angles.

Now, if we could simply acknowledge the weight of the Backpack of Life on our backs as we walk through life by faith, we would experience greater vitality and joy in life.

The problem is that our Backpack of Life is a heavy burden to carry. So, we naturally stop walking by faith, to take the backpack off and rummage through it to see what is in there.

The Problem: We Rummage Through Our Backpack of Life

When we rummage through our Backpack of Life, we pull everything out and engage with it. All the situations we are facing, our thoughts and feelings, our past experiences, we engage with it all.

When we do, we turn them all into burdens that begin to overwhelm us. Because as we hold our attention on these aspects of our life, we lose focus on living out our values and our lives. As we engage with these burdens, we lose objectivity and perspective. Our life becomes our burdens. This is because in life, whatever you are holding right in front of your eyes is all that you can see. You can’t see past it. This results in us experiencing far less vitality and joy in our lives.

This is because instead of living out our values, we live out a different set of ‘values’.

• Fear

• Anxiety

• Shame

• Guilt

• Remorse

• Resentment

• Self-doubt

• Pain

These are not values in the truest definition of the term, but we spend so much time living them out in our lives, that from the outside looking in, one could be forgiven for thinking that they were.

These are not the ‘values’ that God wants us to live out in our lives, because every one of them deprives our lives of vitality and joy.

The good news is that there is a way for us to walk with Jesus and our Backpack of Life which enables us to live our lives by faith and not by sight. A way that enables us to live out a completely different set of values and experience vitality and joy.

We discover this amazing solution in the next passage.

The Solution: Stop Rummaging Through Your Life and Pass it to Jesus

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” Matthew 11:28-30 NLT

The truth is, the Backpack of Life is not ours to carry, it is Jesus’ to carry. Everything the backpack contains will always be with us, and so too is Jesus.

We are not meant to engage with the contents of our Backpack of Life; we are meant to simply notice that its contents exist. Our thoughts, emotions, various situations and past experiences are still present in the backpack, but now they are being carried by someone far more equipped to handle them: Jesus!

As we walk with Jesus in faith, knowing that He carries our Backpack of Life for us, we are free to carry an entirely different backpack instead. Jesus has a backpack for us all. A lighter backpack. A backpack that doesn’t overburden our faith but strengthens it instead. A backpack filled with everything we need to know to get through life. A backpack that equips and empowers us to live out a completely different set of values in our lives:

• Love

• Faith

• Hope

• Forgiveness

• Grace

• Mercy

• Justice

• Excellence

We are free to live out these values in our lives because we are no longer looking at the contents of our Backpack of Life but are carrying the contents of Jesus’ backpack instead. When we live out these values in our lives, we will experience far greater vitality and joy in our lives.

So, what are the steps we need to take to Stop Rummaging Through Life and Start Walking By Faith?

Next Steps: How to Stop Rummaging Through Life and Start Walking By Faith

Every day, and throughout our days, we need to repeatedly take two steps into faith so that we can stop rummaging through life and start living it!

First Step: Trust that Jesus Carries our Backpack of Life

Our first step of faith is to acknowledge that Jesus wants to carry the burdensome parts of our lives on His back. This requires us to willingly put everything into the Backpack of Life. All our thoughts, emotions, situations and past experiences. Everything! We must be willing to hand it all over to Him, with trust and confidence that He will carry it on our behalf. Those burdensome areas of our life will still exist, but Jesus is carrying the burden instead.

This allows us to freely take up His backpack instead. A backpack filled with everything we need to be equipped and empower us to live out our values and our lives with vitality and joy.

Second Step: Trust that Jesus’ Backpack Equips and Empowers Us for Life

Our second step of faith is to put Jesus’ backpack on our back and confidently trust that it contains everything we need to live out our lives. The best part is we don’t need to rummage through this backpack to see that everything we need is there, because we know it was packed by Jesus himself. Therefore, it contains everything we need to be equipped and empowered to live out our values in our lives.

A Final Observation for the Journey of Faith Ahead

Moments will come in life when we pick-up the wrong backpack. As we carry the weight of our Backpack of Life again, we will feel weary and overburdened. We might even start to rummage within it again and lose sight of Jesus. That’s ok. The trick is to stop, breathe and notice that we are carrying the wrong backpack again.

When we do, we just need to look up and see Jesus. Because He will help us to put the contents of our life back into the Backpack of Life and place it on His back instead. Then He will hand us His backpack filled with everything we need for the journey ahead, and we will place it on our backs and walk with Him in faith once more.

Reflection

What are the various contents of your Backpack of Life and how is rummaging through them negatively impacting your life?

Prayer

Father God, help me to see that the contents of my Backpack of Life aren’t going anywhere, but neither are you. Help me to place the thoughts, emotions, situations and past experiences that are overburdening me back into the backpack and trust Jesus to carry it instead. Help me to do this every day, as I walk in faith with you equipped and empowered to live out my values.

Affirmation

Jesus has equipped and empowered me to walk with Him in faith and to live out my values.

Action

Every time you find yourself rummaging through your Back of Life, stop, breathe and notice your thoughts and emotions. Take a moment to sit with them, see that they exist but that Jesus is right there beside you. Take the thoughts, emotions, situations and past experiences that you are struggling with in that moment and see that you don’t carry them alone. Jesus carries them with you. Feel your burden lighten as you acknowledge this truth.

If it helps, you can go one step further. Visualise placing your thoughts, emotions, situations and past experiences into The Backpack of Life. Then visualise placing that backpack on Jesus’ back and taking His lighter backpack and placing it on your back instead. Feel the difference in weight and how much lighter and more empowered you feel.