Giving our burdens to the Lord... doing so in practice

[Backroads]

This is often touted as one of the great blessings of the Atonement. Yet in practice, how is this done? 

[NeuroTypical]

Heh - yep, sometimes it's easier said than done.  It can involve changing your heart over a situation, and hearts can be sticky stubborn things.  "I'm just going to stop worrying about it" (said a massive pile of humans who are still worrying about it because they don't know how to stop.)

 

 

[Jedi_Nephite]

In my experience, “handing over our burdens” doesn’t necessarily mean we stop worrying about it, but that once we have done our part in resolving our burdens, we can turn it over to the Lord and trust that He will handle the rest.

[CV75]

On 7/19/2022 at 2:43 PM, Backroads said:

This is often touted as one of the great blessings of the Atonement. Yet in practice, how is this done? 

I would say that faith in Christ initiates the spirit of discipleship, and following His discipline is the practice of taking His yoke upon us. He carries our burdens with His yoke, which represents our covenant relationship with Him. When we face specific trials or burdens, we act as disciples every way we can, and comfort comes one way or time or another.

[estradling75]

I think it is the same idea that is behind forgiveness.

Bad things happen, struggle is real and we need to deal with it.

But there comes a time when we have done all we can, and we have to wait for some kind of resolution or at least the next actionable step... So what do we do while we wait?

Most of the time we run in mental and emotional circles.  This keeps us stuck, we don't let it go but there is nothing useful or productive to do about it.  So we waste a lot of mental and emotional energy going no where.

But if we have the faith to say, 'I've done what I can, now it is in the Lords hands' then we can turn our focus other things.  That is what we need to do, and that is what takes time and practice, because it is hard.

I find it exhausting to spend a lot of metal and emotional energy going nowhere... but that same energy spent moving forward is still tiring... but it seems to make its own positive feedback loop with progress being made.

[Carborendum]

On 7/19/2022 at 1:43 PM, Backroads said:

This is often touted as one of the great blessings of the Atonement. Yet in practice, how is this done? 

There are two aspects of this principle that need to be described.

• Burdens of sin.
• Burdens of the trials of life.

BURDENS OF SIN

As far as the burdens of sin, the Atonement is not just a principle that effects our eternal destiny.  It helps us TODAY.  As we go through the repentance process, we feel the guilt, sorrow, and offense fade away.  With more serious sins with more serious mortal consequences, they may not go away completely.  That little bit remaining is to remind us how wrong it was.  It gives us motivation to never do it again.  But the debilitating weight we feel will be lifted.  That can happen today.

What does it look like?  I had been burdened by sorrow over a particular thing I did.  I prayed about it.  I don't know how to describe all that happened next.  I simply had a miraculous change of heart.  I began doing things I'd never done before.  I took measures to do the exact opposite of what I had done before.  I went from running away from doing something I was afraid of doing, to knowing how important it was to do it.  Now I have it as a conscious part of my personality.

BURDENS OF LIFE

When we have trials, we most often don't have these weights removed.  We're often given strength to bear them up.

A long time ago I experienced my first period of prolonged unemployment. For a person of my disposition, you may as well have castrated me.  I was lost and despondent.

While I had given up, my wife had not.  I have come to recognize when my wife has made special intercession for me through prayer.  While I was wallowing, she was praying.  And at some point, I simply felt that there was a sense of purpose.  I could do other things while I was unemployed.  The burden of unemployment was not taken away.  I still had financial issues to deal with.  But I no longer felt lost.  I saw a distant horizon that was beautiful.

HOW

Now, this is probably what you're really asking.  How do you have access to such power?  There is no magic wand.  No trick.  And certainly no shortcuts.  We simply do what we're always told to do.

• Recognize that there is a problem.
• Humble ourselves before the Lord and our fellow men.
• Pray for forgiveness and pray for help.*
• Look for the Lord's hand in our lives.
• Look for the additional help that the Lord is offering because of our prayers.
• Accept His strength that is offered.

* You may notice that praying for forgiveness is part of the process even if it is a burden of life rather than a burden of sin.  Mark 2:5-12

[Emmanuel Goldstein]

Like with everything in the Gospel it comes down to belief and faith. I find that by focusing my mind and actions on following the Way of Christ, I gain boost in my spiritual feelings. I think trusting Him to relieve my worries and anxieties and then acting as if it is happening creates a feeling of confidence for me. Try to make every day better than the last and letting the past fade into the past. Every day is a new chance to get things right and we all get about 20,000 chances in our adult lives to do this before we exit this life. Just keep moving upward and forward and try not to dwell on your failures, you can't change what as been, you can only learn to forgive and seek forgiveness from those that have hurt you and that you have hurt.

Cheers.

[Anddenex]

On 7/19/2022 at 12:43 PM, Backroads said:

This is often touted as one of the great blessings of the Atonement. Yet in practice, how is this done? 

In some ways, I wish this were as easy as Spencer W. Kimball's quote, "Do it." We are informed in scripture to take the "yoke" of Christ upon us. We have wonderful poems, analogies, that say when you see only one set of footsteps it is because the Lord was carrying you at that time. We come up with other analogies to comfort, or try to comfort, our hurting souls.

In practice for us to fully practice this we must be "fair dinkum" -- fully committed. This correlates with with what Omni said, "offer your whole souls as an offering unto him." This is why it is also hard, because the majority of us, in practice, do not fully commit and give our whole selves unto the Lord. We seek to maintain - self. To cast fully our burden on him, means we lose "self."

When we look over scripture we can see highlights of how this looks in practice (even in not in perfection):

• 2 Nephi 4
• Alma the Younger who remembered the words of his father about a Savior
• Stephen upon being stoned who saw the heaven's open
• Nephi upon being tied by his brothers allowed his suffering to be caught up in Christ
• Alma and the Nephites when seized upon by the Lamanites
• And many others

I'm writing this, full well, knowing I'm not yet 'fair dinkum' -- at one point I felt like I was fully committed -- until I had some experiences in life that shifted many thoughts of mine. The shift is all do to the word "self".

If we take Lehi's counsel, invitation, to Laman and Lemuel to be righteous like unto the river they past flowing continually into the sea of righteousness. As we look further into the analogy, when the river flows into the sea are we able to tell the difference between the water in the sea and the water coming from the river? No. But if we seek to maintain "self" then we ultimately seek to maintain our ways, our truth, and our life.