Unloading Your Baggage

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Wednesday, August 31st. Carrying around extra emotional weight can seriously impact your ability to do just about everything. Today's program takes you to Hebrews chapter 12 to help in unloading your baggage. When you fly almost anyplace today, your baggage is an issue. They want to know how many bags you have.

They want to know how much they weigh. And then they want you to know how much it's going to cost you actually for having those bags. Then the whole issue is, will they get there when you do?

Secondly, if not, will they finally catch up with you? Or thirdly, you just lose them all together. And so, what I want to talk about in this message is a different kind of baggage. But the title of this message is unloading your baggage. And I want you to turn, if you will, to Hebrews chapter 12. And I want us to read these first three verses together because we're talking about baggage.

And the truth is, all of us have it. So, look, if you will, in this twelfth chapter of Hebrews and the first three verses. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us lay aside every encumbrance and these sin which so easily entangles us. And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. And so, I want us to look at the baggage that all of us have to deal with in our life because all of us have it. And sometimes this baggage came with us when we were very early in life. For example, many parents put baggage into the lives of their little children very early in life.

Baggage that damages them in such a fashion that they live with it the rest of their life, unless someone helps them to identify it and then to deal with it. Now, watch this. You can be a fine Christian. You can read your Bible every day. You can pray. You can go to church. You can tithe your income.

You can do all those things. And in spite of that, you can have an encumbrance in your life that is having a very negative, painful and sometimes destructive effect in your life. Somebody says, well, do you have encumbrances in your life? I had a very damaging encumbrance in my life that I was not even aware of. And it taught me something about looking at other areas of my life to see what was there. And I looked around at this particular point in my life and everything was right, except on the inside of me, something that I could not identify was not right. I didn't know what it was. I'd pray. I'd look around.

I couldn't blame anything on anybody. Church was growing. I didn't know what it was, except on the inside of me. So finally, I called four of my friends and I said, you know, God's trying to tell me something and I don't know what it is and I need some help. Now, I'd already been a pastor for a number of years. So I called these four men and we all met in Colorado.

They all came from different places in the country and I happen to know them. So I said, here's what I want to do. I don't know what God is trying to say to me, but I've got to find out. So here's what I'd like to do.

I would like to tell you everything that I know about me, good, bad, and indifferent. I'd like for you to listen and then whatever you four men agree, because they were godly men, whatever you four men agree I should do, that's what I'll do. They said, okay. So we started about two o'clock in the afternoon and we talked on till about ten o'clock that night, had a little dinner. And during the night I wrote, I wrote seventeen pages, legal-sized pages, longhand of things that I wanted to say to them that I wanted to be sure I didn't forget. Next morning we talked on till about ten o'clock and one of these men said, Charles, put your head on the table and close your eyes. So I did. He said, and I had told him everything I knew and one of the things I told him about is that my father died when I was nine months of age and I never thought about having a dad really. And so he said to me, put your head on the table and close your eyes.

I did. He said, your father just picked you up in his arms and held you. What do you feel? And I burst out crying and cried and cried and cried and I didn't know why I was crying. So he asked me that again, I kept on crying. Finally when I finished crying, he said to me, he said, what did you feel? I said, I felt hugged and I felt warm and I felt secure and I broke out crying again.

I had a big encumbrance in my life and here's what it was. Up until that day, I never experienced God loving me. I preached it, I told other people about it, but personally I had never experienced it. Now say two things here, the power of a father and its influence upon a child is tremendous. I don't think I would have ever have discovered that about myself if I had not been willing to say to four men, tell me everything you see, I'll do whatever you say.

I never understood emotionally God loving me. Was it a hindrance? Yes, it was, and I'll tell you something. When I came back home, one of the first things I did is I went to my sermon file to find out how many sermons I'd ever preached on love, one, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds, only one. I looked at my outline and I thought, that wasn't even worth listening to because it was so shallow.

You know why? Because I wasn't experiencing what I was talking about. And I'm telling you all that to say this, that day, that morning changed my whole life, changed the ministry, changed everything I felt about the Christian life because all of a sudden God just stripped me of something that had been a part of my life all those years. And I could have gone back and said, God, why'd you take my father? But that wasn't the issue. The issue was his absence, listen carefully, Daddy, before you walk out on your family. My father's absence by death, it wouldn't have made any difference what the reason was, by death, left me with this gaping hole in my emotional being that left me damaged until that day when I understood that God loved me unconditionally.

And for the first time in my life, I experienced it. You think walking away from your family is nobody's business but yours? Oh, yes, it is. There are millions of kids today who are suffering and who have an encumbrance upon them that you, Father, don't think you had any responsibility for.

Yes, you do. You will pay a price for that sin of walking away from your children to do your own thing. We all have encumbrances.

I've just named you one of mine. But when I think about how many people who are carrying a load in their life, they don't even understand why. But this, he says, the Christian life is a race. And Paul said, it's a walk.

And in order to do it well, we must get rid of encumbrances. Now the second thing he says, not only encumbrances, but he said, watch this, the sin, which easily entangles us, he didn't say encumbrances and sins, he says encumbrances and the sin. And he uses the word the in front of it to make an emphasis. Now what is the sin? Well, I want to describe what the sin is without describing the sin itself. So here are the characteristics of one of those the sins. Number one, it's the primary area of weakness in your life. Every single one of us, no matter who you are, we all have at least one area of weakness in our life we have to deal with because we came in this world with an old sinful nature and God forgives and He cleanses, and yet there's one sin above all others that everybody has to deal with and it's different in every person's life.

So first of all, it's the primary area of weakness. Secondly, it's the one that you're most tempted by, whatever it may be. It may be gossip or it could be stealing or it could be lying or it could be lust or it could be whatever. The one you're most tempted with, thirdly, it's the one you must be continually on guard against, whatever that may be. That's the nature of that one sin. It's the one that troubles you the most in resisting, difficult to resist. It's the one that most frequently ensnares you, whatever it may be, frequently ensnares you. It's the one that divides your mind the most frequently because it is a sin. And once you begin to think about that, it divides your mind, whether it's toward someone else or not.

It hinders your relationship with other people. Whatever that sin is in anybody's life, it's going to hinder their relationship with others. You say, well, my sin is secret.

No, it's not. It'll come out. It surfaces when you pray. When you pray, for example, and you're reading the Scriptures and you're talking to God about your life, the sin that is besetting or entangling, it's going to crop up while the Spirit of God's going to bring it up. Likewise, it strikes at your self-respect.

Whatever it may be. Let's just say, for example, it's stealing, that somehow you just want to take advantage of people and get whatever you can get in life and think about what that does to a person's self-respect. And that sin, whatever it might be, is going to hinder your relationship to God because it's just hanging in there. You keep committing it. It's going to hinder your relationship to other people because it's there and it comes out in ways you're not even aware of. So that's the nature of that sin that easily besets us.

So think about it. Everybody has one of those areas of weakness, however it may be expressed or not expressed, it's there. Either we deal with them or we go through life hindered. Now, the big question is, how do we handle this excess baggage in our life that God does not intend for us to have? Number one, we admit, Lord, this is an encumbrance in my life. Second, I have to admit that here is one of those entangling sins in my life.

I admit, Lord, it is here. And number three, it is a decision to take responsibility for it. No matter where it came from, how you got it, what happened, how it developed in your life, I take responsibility for this in my life, Lord. And number four, make a definite decision to deal with it. Lord, You have identified this thing in my life.

I have a poor self-image. I admit it. I take responsibility for it no matter who fed it into my life.

No matter what the source is, I take responsibility for it and I choose to deal with it. Notice what he says in this passage. He says, for example, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us. Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

So what is he saying? I have to lay it aside. Now what does that mean, laying aside?

That word means to strip off, for the runner to take off all the excess clothes, to lay it aside. That doesn't fit me for this race. What is it that does not fit us in the Christian race that you and I are living? None of those encumbrances, none of those sins fit who we are. And we have to do it in the same way that we do in the Christian race. And we have to do it in the same way that we do in the Christian race. We have to do it in the same way that we do in the Christian race. We have to follow the followers of Jesus, loved by God unconditionally. And when he says, lay it aside, what does that mean?

Here's what it means. All of us know that Philippians 4, 13, Paul said, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I'm going to do exactly what he says, not only, he says, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, I will do. I will do what is necessary through Christ who strengthens me.

And what is that? I choose to lay it down. I choose to walk away from it.

And watch this, you say, but I've done that so many times before, but wait a minute. You can't do it in your own strength. I can do all things through Christ. Now the Holy Spirit indwells every single one of us as believers. He is the one who will empower you, who will enable you to lay it aside and walk away. Yes, you can, not in your strength, but in His strength.

Think about this. First of all, God doesn't want it in your life, so He's on your side. He's got the Holy Spirit living inside of you to empower you. Listen, you and God are in absolute agreement about encumbrances and sins in your life that they don't fit. They're a hindrance to you.

You don't want them in your life. You want to be what God wants you to be. He's a hundred percent on your side. When you choose by faith, I choose to lay it down. I'm getting ready to run the next phase of this race. That does not fit who I am. I can't win this race to fulfill God's purpose and plan until every encumbrance, this sin is gone. I choose to confess it. I choose to strip myself of it by the power of the Holy Spirit. I choose to walk away from this and to follow you in the race. If God would not help you have victory over that, He is not the God He says He is.

He will enable you. But you've got to be willing to identify it, to acknowledge it, take responsibility for it. You can't blame your parents. You say, well, if my parents hadn't done this or if my brother or sister, no, none of that's the issue.

The issue is I take full responsibility that at this point in my life, here's where I am. This is not what God wants. I choose by faith in the power of the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ to lay it down, lay it aside. That's the same phrase that Paul used in Ephesians about laying aside other things in life. If you want victory, you can have victory. My primary purpose in this message is to help you identify what is there that's hindering you from running well the race that God wants you to run.

He's got the best race for you. He has the best plan and He is, listen, by His own nature and His own Word He's obligated to help you do exactly what He wants you to do. You can say I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Can do is one thing, but I will do. I will do what Christ wants me to do and desires me to do in this situation.

I will do it. Remember, it is discipline, not desire, that determines the outcome of our decisions. Discipline not desire determines our destiny.

It is the willingness to choose to lay it aside. God will set you free. Now, if you're not saved, please listen to me. It's just going to get worse until you surrender your life to Jesus Christ, who is the only one who can change your life, bring these things to the surface and help you deal with them. It is the blood of Jesus at Calvary that takes care of all of our sins, all of our heartaches, our problems and our burdens.

He does it in different ways, but He's the one who does it. And it's my prayer you'd be wise enough to say, Lord, I acknowledge my sinfulness. I desperately need You. I'm asking You to forgive me. I'm surrendering my life to You and I'm trusting that if what You did at Calvary when You died, You paid my sin debt in full, I want to be the person You want me to be. And Father, how grateful we are that You love us enough to surface these things in our lives, and help us to understand. And I pray that every person who hears this message will be honest enough to search out what is that easily entangling sin? What are these encumbrances in my life that are cheating me out of God's very best? And Father, I thank You that You are willing to give victory wherever it is desired. We bless You for it through the Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, amen. Thank you for listening to today's podcast, Unloading Your Baggage. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.