Letting God Handle Your Burdens - Part 2

Welcome to this weekend's In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley. If you need rest and peace, go to Christ and let Him lift the weight of your troubles from your shoulders. Let's listen and learn to let God handle your burdens. What would you say is the most difficult and the most destructive burden to bear? Well, you may have an opinion, say the loss of a loved one or something like that. No, the most destructive burden to bear is the burden of guilt, guilt over the past, guilt over something in your life that you think you can't handle, or guilt over something you think will never change and that you can't ever do anything about it.

What we need to ask is this. How are we to handle the burdens of our life? And I want you to turn, if you will, to Matthew chapter eleven and look at three verses here. Here is God's answer, very crystal clear answer to how you and I are to handle the burdens in our life.

Listen carefully. Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light. You say, well now wait a minute, I don't see any answer to that.

It's here. Just listen carefully. He says, first of all, come to Me. Well, coming to Him doesn't necessarily remove the burden or alleviate it. Because you know what we do oftentimes? Here's what we do. We'll come to Him with a burden and what we, we say, well I'm just going to turn it over to Him. What we do, we don't turn it over to Him, we just discuss it with Him. Well now God, let me tell you about this. Now here's what I feel. I think if you would do thus and so. Well here's what you promised in your Word, that you'd supply all of my needs according to your riches and glory. I'm bringing this to you.

Thank you very much. Walk away and what? I'm heavier than I was before. Because I've been in this big discussion with God and what did I do? I just discussed it. I didn't deal with it.

Discussion is not the issue. So first of all, He says come to Me. And then look what He says do. He says I have some instructions for you. Now listen to these instructions because I'm not just telling you something that I think. I'm telling you something that I know by experience over and over and over again in many facets of all the years that I live. I know that it works.

He has never failed to keep His promise. So, look at His instruction now. Look at these verses.

Here's what He says. First of all, come to Me, all you are heavy laden and weary and tired and worn. He said I'll give you rest. Now, having come to Him, I have two other requests. Listen, take My yoke upon you and learn from Me. I'm gentle and humble in heart. You'll find rest for your souls.

Now, two things have to deal with. If you want God, listen carefully, if you want God to deal with your burden and lift it off of you, you say, but you know what, you just don't know how bad this burden is, that's making them what it is. There are no exceptions in this passage. He didn't say come and I'll do except. Here's what He said. Come to Me and notice what He said. I want you to read it because if you don't read this, I just want you to mark it in your Bible. There are two things here that we, what we do is we just sort of read over these two things because we don't think about what they mean.

Look what He says. First of all, verse twenty-nine, take My yoke upon you. Now, what in the world does that mean? Well, you've seen pictures of the oxen with that wooden yoke all across them and holding them, both of them yoked together so they walk together, they pull together, everything's together. Or you've seen these yokes that they place on a person so they can carry weight and they're equal weight on both sides. But the whole idea of the yoke is submission.

Now watch this because you're prone to turn it off right here. He says, take My yoke upon you. But listen to what He says. My yoke is easy. It, listen, a yoke, if you'll think about what that will do to your neck and your shoulders, for long it would be red and be so, be blistered.

Next thing you know, you couldn't even do that. Here's what He says. My yoke is easy. Why?

Because it never touches you. But on the other hand, here's what He's saying. You want Me to bear you a burden and take you a burden? Surrender your will to Me. Get under the yoke. When you get under the yoke, here's what He says. You get under the yoke with Me, I take all the weight off.

Now listen to something I'm going to say very carefully. Jesus Christ is not a place we dump our burdens. He's not a dump.

He's not a dump. And many people have the idea, well I'll just go to Jesus and say, Lord, here's my burden and I'm asking You to take it away and I'm going to fast and pray and do all these things, You'll take it away. He's not going to do that. We don't dump it on Him. Here's what we do. We surrender ourselves to Him. And what do we do? We get under this yoke of surrender and submission to Him.

He takes the weight and what do we do? We begin to walk in concert with Him. We begin to think the way He thinks. We begin to look at things from His perspective. It is not a matter of dumping it on Him.

It is a matter of coming into relationship with Him. And the relationship is submission to His will. So that, listen, if this burden in your life is something that does not belong there, what will He do? He will take it away and give you a sense of peace and confidence. If it is a burden that He has allowed for a specific reason and He knows it's for our good, what will He do?

He will leave it there, but He'll do the same thing. He takes the weight away. And so therefore, you and I can live in any circumstance and situation in life and what? With a sense of confidence that my Lord Jesus Christ, who went to the cross and died for my sins, is living His life in and through me, which is what He said He would do. Now He has the burden that He's allowed there, but He's lifted it.

And so I don't have to feel the weight of it. He says, surrender, take my yoke upon you. And if you'll notice how lovingly He says these things, take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle, humble in heart, you'll find rest for your souls. Here's what He says. You're in turmoil, in battle in your heart, civil war going on all the time.

He says, here's what'll happen. If you will surrender your life to Me and surrender your burden to Me, I'll take away that anxiety, fretting, fuming, worrying, all of that, and you'll find rest for your soul. And there are multitudes and multitudes of people who live in the civil war. Things in their life going on that they know that are not right, the burden of sin, the burden of lost communication, the burden of financial things they've gotten themselves into, all kinds of burden.

If they were to stop and list them, they'd have a nervous breakdown sitting right there. And so God says, I want to relieve you of the burden. I want to relieve you of the burden. He will either take it away when you surrender your life to Him, or if it's something He's going to use for guidance and direction to fulfill His purpose for your life.

Well, you have the same result. What? You don't feel it. When He takes it away, you don't feel it.

When He, listen, when He leaves it there but takes the weight away, you still don't feel it. God will equip you to face any circumstance of life, but it begins with surrender, not dumping. So why do you keep saying that?

Because that's what people do. I'm just going to turn it over to you. No, I'm to get under the yoke with Him. So that's the first word of instruction, surrender.

What am I doing? I'm surrendering my burden and my life. The second thing you'll notice He says, and learn from Me. Well, what does that mean?

Well, notice, now watch this carefully. The surrender is an act, one-time act. I may have to do it many times, it's an act. Learn is a process. I have to learn from Him.

If I want God to lift my burden and enable me to live with peace in my mind, I've got to begin to learn who He is. He says, learn of me. What am I to learn about Him? I'm to learn about who He is. I'm to learn about His love. I'm to learn about His forgiveness. I'm to learn about His chastisement, to realize that's not a lack of love, but motivation on His part to get us on the right path doing His will. He says, I am to learn of Him. And notice what He says, I'm humble of heart.

I'm gentle in spirit. If you could just get this, Jesus Christ is not in the business of condemning. He said, I didn't come in the world to condemn the world, but through Him that the world might be saved. God loves you and Jesus Christ's very life is an expression of the love of God.

His death is the greatest expression of the love of God ever demonstrated by God to mankind. He wants to take your load, but you've got to be willing to surrender it to Him. It's the surrender.

That's the big stumbling block, surrender. You mean to tell me that I'm to just to say to Him, Lord, here's what I'm going through. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to deal with it. I don't know what to do about it.

It's so much in my past. What does He want you to do? He wants you to come to Him in prayer and lay it all out. He knows every bad thing you've ever done, every bad thing you've ever thought, every bad thing you ever thought about doing, or doing, or what you would do if you could do and wouldn't do. He knows all about that.

You know what He says? I'm willing to forgive you. I'm willing to cleanse you.

I'm willing to give you a new beginning. He's in the business of remaking people. He's in the business of absolutely transforming a person's life, not destroying them. He wants to take your burden.

Are you willing to give it to Him? Listen, He, watch this, He doesn't take your burden without taking you. He doesn't. He says, My yoke is easy. Why did He say that? Because He wants us to get under the yoke. And what does that mean? Did we surrender ourselves to Him? Come under, listen, come under His rulership and guidance in our life. And what happens?

He just takes that load right off of us. Could it still be there? Yes. Is the weight there?

No. So, what is He saying? He says, Come to Me, learn from Me. Now, there are a couple of things implied, for example, here. So, we're talking about submitting everything to Him.

But think about what has to happen as a result of that. If I'm to come to Him and submit myself to Him and learn from Him, it means I also must trust Him. You know why people won't come to Him? They don't trust Him. You see, if I come to Him with my burden, let's say it's something that's just terrible in the past. You say, Well, how can I trust God for that?

Why not? Have you ever come to Him and God said, mm-mm-mm-mm, not forgiving you for that? No, He's never said that. He wants you to come. He desires for you to come.

He longs for you to come. He loves for you to come to Him with that burden. But I can tell you, He's not going to take the burden without taking you. So therefore, your spirit, soul, mind, and body, you must surrender your life to Him. And then you have to trust Him.

If you don't trust Him, you won't do it. Somebody says, Well, if I surrender my whole life to Him and put my trust in Him, then He could call me to be a missionary. Or He could call me to be a pastor. I don't know why people think of bad things when they think about that. Or He could call, He may take my child. That's the devil.

I may lose my husband. In other words, we think of all these things. What kind of God is that? You've got a God that's not, that this Bible knows nothing about. It's a God of love. The very presence of Jesus is an expression of the awesome love of God that He'd send His only begotten Son in the world to die on a cross. But bunch of sinners like us, and you question whether He loves you or not?

Yes, He loves you. Trust Him. Listen to this verse I gave you a while ago.

I said it's my favorite key verse. Whenever I have a question, I always go to this one. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not to your own understanding. Just trust Him. In all your ways, acknowledge Him. Yield to Him. Obey Him. Surrender to Him. He'll direct your path. He'll show you exactly what to do. Proverbs three, five, and six, show you exactly what to do. Do you believe that? If you believe that, what will you do? You will come to Him, surrender your life to Him, lay the burden down before Him, listen, and then anticipate and expect and watch and observe how He deals in your life. And the fact that the weight is gone. When He takes the burden away, and I've heard wonderful testimonies over the years and a lot of people have gotten saved and maybe they lived a pretty raunchy life.

And as one of my friends calls it, living in the briar patch. And they get saved. And one of the first things they talk about is how, that just makes me want to cry, how they feel.

What do they feel? The weight's gone. The guilt's gone. All the past is gone.

Now they have a brand new beginning. But there's one other thing that's required of us. It's implied here. And that is, we must leave it with Him. Now, how do I know that I can leave it with Him? Because of who He is. Because of what He said, what He's promised.

And because He has the power to handle it. That's how I know I can leave it. But here's what we do. We bring it to Him. And some of you will go home today maybe and you get on your knees and you'll cry out to God and you'll tell Him, Lord, today I heard the message and today I'm just going to lay it down before You, God.

I want to thank You in Jesus's name. You're going to take this off of me. And Lord, do You know how bad I've been?

You know the things. Some of this is my fault, some of it's not. God, I'm just going to leave it with You. Amen. In Jesus's name, hallelujah. God, I hope God heard what I had to say.

I trust He did. So, here's what I want you to realize. It's not a time of discussion. It's a time of surrender and trust, laying it down. No matter what your burden, no matter how long it's been there. You say, man, I've been living with this for years. You can get rid of it today.

It may be healed. When I think about people, for example, who have theological problems, they've been, they've grown up believing you can lose your salvation, lose your salvation. Sin, of course, you lose your salvation. That's living with this awful burden of uncertainty. If I die today, I may go to hell. So, what happens? When a person suddenly realizes they're eternally secure, whoo, goodness, they begin to want to shout and praise God. They want to just sail out across the auditorium.

Why? For the first time in their life, free of the burden of fear of dying without Christ. Then, of course, there are people who've believed other things the Bible teaches and believe them wrongly.

Who've said, thank God, praise the Lord, thank God. I've been burdened with this for years and years. You mean God can still use me? Yes. After what I've done? Yes.

And they get free. So, ask yourself this question. What is the thing in my life that is burdening me?

How do I deal with it? Same way. I come to Him. I lay it all out. I surrender it to Him.

I trust Him. Lay it before Him. Now, think about this, you don't have to beg and plead, sacrifice fast and pray and make God a bunch of promises.

There's not anything in here about this. Come to me, take my yoke upon you, submit yourself to me. Learn from me, begin to walk in my ways is what He's saying.

I'm gentle and humble in heart. And you'll find rest of your souls, for my yoke's easy. My burden is light.

You know what He's saying? Why carry something so heavy when my way is light? Why deal with things that are so difficult when my way is easy? You know, when I think about things that people are dealing with, I just want to weep sometime.

I think, oh God, if they just knew the truth. And that's my challenge to you. To believe the simple truth of the Word of God. Now, you have to make a choice. Well, I believe what He said and give Him this burden.

Remember, along with yourself. All I keep bearing it, and one of these days hope I'll die before long, but I can't handle it too much longer. And when somebody says to you, I don't think I stand this much longer, I've had all I can handle, I can't take it, this is it, here's what I know. They've just confessed that they're bearing a burden, God, never intended for them to bear. And my prayer is, if you have never been saved, you've never trusted Jesus, you have a reason to feel the burden. That burden can be removed right now. The moment you say to Him, Lord Jesus, I'm trusting You as my personal Savior, I've sinned against You, I'm asking You to save me from my sins now, in Jesus's name, amen.

What happened? All that sin debt suddenly disappeared. You're saved by the grace of God. Thank you for listening to Letting God Handle Your Burdens. 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.