Backpack: When I was a young teenager I was at my friends house and we started watching this movie. The lead actor was in really good shape and every morning he would get up and put on a backpack and would go for a run. The crazy thing is that the backpack was filled with bricks. So every morning this guy would get up and put on a backpack filled with bricks and go for a run. He was tough. Sometimes he would add bricks because it wasn't heavy enough but he never took out bricks, only added them.

Then one morning he takes his brick filled backpack and forget to look both ways as he crosses the street and WHACK he gets hit by a car. He is paralyzed from the waist down or maybe from the neck down...I don't remember. Then I think there was something about a white faced monkey...it was a long time ago.

Sometimes I get to feeling real responsible for life. I feel responsible for The Bridge Church and guaranteeing success for the church. I feel responsible to change people's lives to connect people to God. I think on the surface those are pretty good things to feel responsible for and sometimes it is. But then I get to feeling too responsible and rather than conduit or a vessel of these things I must be the initiator and creator of these things. I assume the role of God. I remove God from his throne in my life and in other's lives and I feel responsible to take over. I put on my brick filled backpack, which as illustrated by the guy in the movie probably isn't such a good idea. I might get attacked by monkeys.

The backpack isn't mine and it's a ridiclous burden to think I can carry. It will go on for a few days and I start getting tired and I feel these bricks jabbing into my back and I start thinking all this work just isn't fair and this responsiblity just isn't good. Then I realize I'm carrying that darn backpack again and I ask God to take it off of me and to carry it for me.

Taking the pack off is generally harder than putting it on. God gives his grace though and he's carrying it again for me.