Daily Devotional By Desiringgod Ministry – John Piper Ministry 4 OCTOBER 2024 | Topic: Lighten My Load or Strengthen My Back
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Lighten My Load or Strengthen My Back
Amid the hardest, most grueling trial I have endured, prayer became my lifeline. During that time, a friend sent me a prayer that I ended up pinning to my bulletin board: “Lord, please lighten my load or strengthen my back.” These became the words I whispered to God throughout the day. I needed God to either lighten the burdens I was carrying or give me strength to endure them. God had to bring change, though I didn’t know in what form. I only knew I couldn’t continue the way things were.
I didn’t often pray “lighten my load or strengthen my back” in one sentence. I usually left a large pause after begging God to lighten my load, since that was what I wanted most. I specifically and directly asked for relief — for healing and deliverance, changed circumstances, divine rescue. But if God chose not to heal me, I needed him to strengthen my back so I wouldn’t collapse under the weight of the burden I was carrying. Since I could never be strong enough to hold the heaviness of my trial, I would need to rely on God’s strength.
Lighten My Load
When I scanned the Internet to find a source for my bulletin-board quote, I found no definitive attribution, but I did find many who suggested that it was better not to ask God to lighten our loads. Instead, they said we should just ask him to strengthen our backs. That was an interesting twist on my original quote, and at first it seemed like a more pious request. I wondered if that should have been my prayer.
Yet as I considered that recommendation, it seemed unrealistic and overly spiritual; we don’t often see people in the Bible asking for strength instead of deliverance. Job begged for help (Job 20:20–21). Jeremiah cried out for relief (Jeremiah 14:19–22). David pleaded for rescue (Psalm 69:1–3). Paul persistently asked for his thorn to be removed (2 Corinthians 12:8–9). And Jesus himself entreated the Father to let the cup pass him by (Matthew 26:39). God knows we are dust, and he created us to look to him for everything. So we shouldn’t consider it less spiritual to ask God to lighten our loads. Such a prayer shows we are trusting God with our deep desires, not offering religious words with distant hearts. God knows how great our suffering is.
God wants to relieve our burdens and bids us to give them to him. We are to cast all our burdens and anxieties on him, for he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). We can come to him when we are weary, and he will take our heavy loads (Matthew 11:28–30). God told the Israelites, “I relieved your shoulder of the burden; your hands were freed from the basket. In distress you called, and I delivered you; I answered you” (Psalm 81:6–7).
“Even in our anguish, we can be assured that if God denies our request, he intends to give us something better.”
Though God knows exactly what we need, he tells us to bring our requests to him. Jesus bids us to ask, seek, and knock. To ask and keep asking. To go to our heavenly Father just as children go to their earthly fathers and ask him for what we want (Matthew 7:7–11). People fell at Jesus’s feet, begging for mercy, throughout the Gospels. Even before they came, Jesus knew what they needed, yet he still asked what they wanted (Mark 10:51). We too can ask specifically for what we want, knowing that God not only hears our prayers but also acts upon them. We are not just offering careless words in case they might help.
So, the prayer “lighten my load” is not a perfunctory one but an earnest desire for God to change our situation. We are bringing him our need, which is all we have to offer. He will do the rest. And when we ask for deliverance and he brings it, we bring glory to God, as he himself declares: “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me” (Psalm 50:15).
Strengthen My Back
Yet sometimes there is no deliverance, and God says no. He doesn’t heal our loved one, restore our relationship, or keep us from excruciating pain. We must go through the trial, grieve the loss, and endure the bitter aftereffects. But even in our anguish, we can be sure that if God denies our request, he intends to give us something better. God never asks anything of his people that is not for our best, assuring us that every sorrow will result in our future gain. Nothing that we lose or don’t have could have ultimately been a blessing to us.
This trial we are enduring must have a great blessing for us. Among the many blessings God offers, the most beautiful is keeping us close to Jesus. To that end, God will provide the strength we need in every trial: strength for the battle (Psalm 18:39), strength when we are afraid (Isaiah 41:10), strength when we are exhausted (Isaiah 40:29–30), and strength to be content whatever the result (Philippians 4:13).
Yet strengthening our back does not necessarily make us physically stronger or able to withstand the next trial on our own without God’s help. The strength God provides doesn’t make us self-sufficient but rather enables us to see how much we need God. When God strengthens our back, we know how and where to get help. Our help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth (Psalm 121:2). As opposed to physical muscles, the strength we receive can be compared to muscle memory, reminding us to cry out to our God. We seek the Lord and his strength rather than depending on our own (Psalm 105:4).
Strong in Weakness
The apostle Paul recounted several trials in which he cried out to God for relief. An affliction in Asia laid such a staggering burden on Paul and his companions they thought they were going to die. But rather than destroying them, this trial taught them to rely not on themselves and their strength but on God who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1:8–9).
Paul struggled with a thorn in his flesh that he pleaded with God to remove. Rather than taking it away, God answered, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). When Paul saw that God’s power intensified in his weakness, he declared, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).
Like Paul, we learn that having the grace to endure our afflictions can be a greater gift than having our afflictions removed. Once we’ve seen and experienced the immense power of God in suffering, we know that God will unfailingly provide all we need, regardless of what happens. With that assurance, we can find joy either in extraordinary deliverance from our trials or in greater dependence on God through them.
God encourages us to cry out to him for whatever we need; he wants us to bring our troubles to him. He may lighten our load and miraculously deliver us, bringing long-prayed-for rescue and relief. Or he may strengthen us in the battle, offering his sustaining grace, the grace that draws us back to him. Both answers turn us to God and deepen our faith, teaching us to trust him through affliction and to glorify him through whatever comes.
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