I was recently gifted the opportunity to share a testimony of one way God has revealed Himself to me. Over the last two years, He has been revealing to me different facts of Himself as Burden Bearer. It has transformed my life in deep, lasting ways. I got to share it with friends at a You are Worthy Ministries maturing in the Lord night.

In case other friends want to hear it, too, I’m linking the video. To watch, click here and Select November 7, 2023.

My dear friend Jennifer Smallwood introduces me and teaches after me. I deeply appreciate all the Lord is doing through her in so many facets. If you have time, listen to the whole thing. If you’d like to just hear my testimony, the introduction starts at 3 minutes and 30 seconds, and I start talking at around 5 minutes and 15 seconds and ends at about minute 21.

Testimony in Written Form

In case you aren’t up for watching the video or simply prefer reading, here are my notes from the talk:

I just want to preface with: Everything I’m going to be able to share is because the Lord has been good to pursue a relationship with me. He has done so much through inner healing tools and time I’ve been gifted through a season of healing, fall reconciliation with God classes, internship, and other teaching and fellowship with this community. If I say something and you think- how did she know that? It’s because I asked Holy Spirit (thank you Jennifer)- or He just was so gracious to tell me.

God introduced Himself to me as bearer in the womb, but I didn’t hear Him. My mom was in great turmoil- turmoil that I felt. I listened to the enemy who told me to bear loss for my mom and I ended up spending the majority of my life bearing the pain of others as if I were their source of life.  I believed the enemy’s lie that in bearing I live. That I have to bear the burdens, pains, losses, and difficulties of life for others. With one parent’s struggle with alcoholism and the other’s with schizophrenia, there was a lot to bear in my family alone. I believed I needed to bear their heavy things to survive.  When I became a believer at age 13, I took verses like “In humility, value others above yourselves” and “bear one another’s burdens” to mean that the pattern of my striving to bear for others was actually biblical and could sustain them in some way. It’s not and it can’t.

He is Bearer; I am Bringer

Jesus, who is Life Himself, was saying to me “I give life. I bear. I sustain. The work that you tried to do: It’s was my work. You sustain no thing under heaven. I bear. I sustain. I am the source of everything to do with life-physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. I literally took the weight of the world. Like- it’s all on me.”  Said Jesus, whose name means salvation. Now my name Angela does not mean salvation- it means messenger or bringer of truth. As much empathy as the Lord has given me and ability to feel the pain of others- it was never so I would bear it myself. It was always so I could bring it to Him.  Through sharing His heart with me in friendships and ministry and missions to various cultures plagued by their own flavor of darkness and despair, I had been entrusted with a great weight of pain not so that I would bear it, but so that I would bring it to Him. Bearing left me in isolation, burnout, and chronic fatigue. Bringing allows me to build relationship with the Lord. It means I’m going directly to the source, the bearer who is carrying each of these people and their concerns heavily on His heart. The bearer who is already at work in each situation. The bearer who teaches me my part from Him- whether it was to intercede, communicate His heart, help in some way, or to carry His heart in a specific way for a person- or whatever. I am bringer and He is bearer.

Loads of Opportunity to Know Him as Bearer

When He showed me these things in the last couple years, He restored choice to me, so I could rechoose. I chose Him, but there was a lot of depth and dimension to the bearer confusion I have had. I was carrying a lot of loads in this life that I was never made to carry. And so I’ve had loads of opportunities to build relationship with Him over these things to learn the varying facets of God as Bearer.

He Bears the Responsibility of Protector

One burden I carried was a feeling that I needed to protect myself and my children but knowing I couldn’t and a burden of feeling dirty from various kinds of abuse throughout my life. God lifted those burdens by declaring to me “You are pure” and walking me back through memories to show me how He has always been protecting me- When I offered Him that burden of protecting I had carried it was huge but it disappeared when He picked it up. I asked where it went, and He said “Child, it didn’t exist. You never had that burden. It was never real. I protect you. I protect your kids.” He bears the responsibility of protector.

He Bears the Responsibility to Deal with Darkness

Another burden I carried in my soul was darkness, distance from the Lord, and oppression from things passed down. Because He crushed sin and death, He is able to bear these things back to darkness where they belong until the day He deals with them with finality.

He Bears Every Part of us to Wholeness

I’ve carried parts of myself that I felt were not acceptable as if they were burdens. He revealed these weren’t burdens at all, but that He gives constant, active, loving attention to nourish every facet of each of us, not allowing any part to wither. He bears the joy of lifting every part of us up into wholeness.

He Bears Guilt

I had learned from infancy to Bear Guilt (false or real). I carried a lot of both kinds. He washed me with His living water of false guilt and He showed me what He does with my rebellion against Him and the guilt of it. I had always strained and pleaded to understand what He meant by “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” Ps 103:12. He gave me a picture to help me grasp how far. When I gave Him sin, He would show me Him putting it deep into a sea. This sea was not made of water, though. It was a titanium sea that would harden and secure the sin and guilt deep beneath its surface. But it might still creep out, my heart feared. So, the Lord zoomed out so that I was outside the desert planet with the titanium sea and He showed me a huge cartoonish lock on it. He promised He alone has the key, and He’s not letting it out. My heart still wasn’t able to trust Him. So, He showed me that in Him, it’s like I’m on a completely different planet- one with colors more beautiful than I’ve been able to see yet- where all things are new and I’m there safe and free with Him. It’s in a completely different galaxy from the other planet in a completely different dimension. And when I give Him sin, He often reminds me just how far away it is in this way that helps my heart know that I no longer bear it. He bears our sin away and leaves it in darkness where it belongs. He is bearer.

He Bears Pain

From the beginning, rejection of God on the earth has created pain. And life is full of it. I have lived a life full of my own physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual pain. He had showed me so much of Himself through pain throughout my life that I knew how to value the trials. I just didn’t know how to really entrust the pain to Him, stop carrying it around, and walk away with just Him. When He began teaching me how to exchange pain through the reconciliation class, He showed me Him in a safety deposit box room of a bank. He had a box open- my safety deposit box and was sitting at a little table with me in the middle of the room. When I gave Him my pain, He explained He would put it in the box and keep it safe for me. But, I asked- I know how grief works- it will roll over you like a wave of the ocean when you least expect it. And He said, “I’m always here. When we need to take it out and feel it, we will do that together. Then we will put it back in here.” Later, he showed me those boxes are made of gold and line the walls of His heart, which glows of gold. Gold is a picture of His nature. He is the gold we exchange our pain for (buy with our pain). Now, as I give Him pain, it often turns to some kind of gold piece which He puts in the box in His heart along with the vial of tears He has collected. He bears our pain.

He Does All the Jobs

Another burden was heaviness. The kind of childhood I had and lost resulted in a false belief that God really did expect me in general to figure it out, solve it and fix it in all the difficult stuff of life. I thought He needed me to be useful. That’s not who He is at all. He showed me a picture of like a living tapestry with different sections. In one square of it, He is the architect drawing up a chart. In another, He is the banker with a check, the administrative person at a desk, the doctor holding up a chart. And like a time lapse video- think the flash with zig zags marks of where he has been- God is doing all the jobs all at once all the time, and He wants me to just lie back on a couch and rest and watch Him work.

He Bears us in the Path of Life: He is the Way and the How

Recently, He invited me to give Him what He warned me was my greatest pain. It was a significant choice that marked my life which I felt I’d made outside of God’s will.  I wore it like a sweatshirt covered in nasty letters that say “Your fault” and carried judgments like, “You were so naïve.” The boulders of pain that emerged from this- I carried as if I deserved them. He reminded me that He had told me, “I’m not waiting for you to get it right. I want you to not worry about getting it right. It’s never been my concern.” About this greatest pain He said, “I AM the Way. You were walking with Me. I love the life we made together. WE made this life. It’s not broken. You don’t need fixed.” He is the Way and He is the How. I don’t walk a a sorrow road of heavy burdens which are mine to carry. I walk with the Way, with the burden Bearer. The One who IS Hope lives in me and sings His song through me. Because He’s outside of time, He can go back, show me the lies I began believing about Him years ago and the Truth about Him and He lets me rechoose. And when I choose Him, He heals those broken places in my soul. In this way, all the burdens I’ve born and since handed over or begun to hand over have been invitations for me to know Him better. I used to think these burdens were what connected me to others, but none of us were created to connect over our unmended brokenness and burdens. We were created to connect over the Jesus we see in one another. He is the Bearer.

He Bears the Pain of His People’s Suffering Globally

Being bearer means He bore all the pain and guilt of rebellion against Him and all its painful affects on this world. He bears all the responsibility for all things. He bears all the pain of His people. And His people are in pain. He has shown me Jesus heavily grieving, low like a woman in birth pains, on behalf of His people around the world. All who live a godly life in Him are promised persecution. (2 Tim 3:11-13). That if they persecuted Him, they will persecute us, too. But we are to count it all joy (James 1) and rejoice and be glad and know we are blessed if we are persecuted (Matt 5:10-12). It’s like His people throughout the world are on crosses of their own pain, with their arms stretched arm in arm around the world supporting one another. In His heavy grief as Bearer, Jesus is bearing the weight of their grief so that they may have joy. He said, “I live in them.” He said in His grief, He creates.  So in His grief, He is creating, living, filling us with Holy Spirit, and making all things new. A bearer is usually someone who carries something to a certain destination. Likewise, He is going somewhere as He’s creating in His grief. And He told me “we are allgoing somewhere that I am creating in My grief”. We are in Him and He is the Way to the all things new. Where He lays down all the burdens and says, “Thus far and no farther” and bears us in Him to the place where we can know and delight in Him- all the gold of Him we have come to know and will continue to get to know- for all eternity. We’ve only got this short time to know Him as Bearer with each unique kind of burden its own distinctive invitation to know Him in His many glorious facets. There in His presence, we will never again need to experience Him as bearer, for there will be no more burdens.

Until then:  Praise be to the Lord, to God our Savior, who daily bears our burdens. Psalm 68:19

Your Burdens

How has God shown up as burden bearer for you? Please share in the comments below.

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