How to Lay Your Burden Down

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, October 30th. Is there something going on in your life that feels heavy, like you just can't carry it anymore? Today, you'll get a very practical suggestion for how to lay your burdens down. If you'll turn to Matthew chapter 11, and I want us to read verses 28, 29, and 30 in the title of this message, How to Lay Your Burden Down. How to Lay Your Burden Down, Matthew chapter 11, verses 28 through 30, just three verses. One of the most comforting and tender things Jesus ever said. He said, Come unto me, all ye that labor, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest under your souls.

For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. All of us have felt times when the burden and the heartaches were such that we didn't know exactly what to do. And somebody said, Well, you just read the Bible and pray and just give it to God. So you found a passage of scripture that may have applied to what you were talking about and thinking about. You got on your knees and you prayed and you said, Lord, I'm just going to give all this to you. And I'm sure you described in detail probably what you were giving.

Then you got up and either you went to bed the next morning, a couple hours had passed by, and all of a sudden you felt the same old thing all over you once again. Well, you told the Lord you'd given that to Him. You were giving it to Him again.

A few hours later, it was still there. And so you finally came to the conclusion that you give it to Him and He gives it back. And so, you know, you throw it up to Him like a yo-yo.

It just keeps coming back. You give it to Him. He gives it back. You give it to Him. He gives it back. God never intended to send back to us burdens which we are to lay down before Him. And so our problem is not that God gives them back.

The problem is oftentimes we don't know how to give Him something in a way that we don't have to pick it up and walk off with it. It's like praying. We've asked the Lord to answer a certain prayer, say, thank you, Father, for doing that.

We get about 15 to 20 minutes away from the time of prayer, and we are worried about it again. So what I want to share with you today is a way, a very simple, practical way to lay a burden down so that you don't have to keep picking it up. So what I'm going to show you today is something that I know absolutely unquestionably works.

It's simple, but it works. And you see, the Lord didn't intend for us to make it complicated. He spoke in parables, which He intended for us to understand. And in this passage, very, very simply, He's saying to us, you give me your burden and I'll take care of it. So I want us to look at these three verses, and let's read that first verse again. He says, Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Here is Jesus' universal call to every person who's heavy laden. And notice He says, Come unto me.

He didn't say, Go over to him or to her. Jesus said, You come unto me, all of you that labor and are heavy laden. Now the word labor here means one who is growing weary or one who is toiling. One of the most interesting things about this passage, as I began to look up all the Greek words, what they mean, when He says heavy laden, that means to be burdened down. Then He says, and I will give you rest.

This is the whole promise and the whole motivation for coming. He says, You come unto me and I'll give you rest. It looks like there's a contradiction here because on the one hand, He says, You come to me and I'll give you rest. On the other hand, He says, You come to me, I'll give you rest and a yoke. He says, Now my yoke is easy, my burden is light. Take my yoke upon you. So our first response might be, Well, now, Lord, it's not a yoke that I want because a yoke was a heavy burden made of wood that they put on the oxen to bear their heads down and to keep them under control.

So they restrained them. A yoke is a form of restraint, form of control. So it looks like the Lord is saying, You give me your burden, I'll give you mine. So our first reply would be, Lord, I want to give you a burden, but I sure don't want another one.

But that's not what He's saying. He says, You give me your burden, I'll give you my yoke. Interesting as I looked up this word rest, what this means. The word rest here comes from the Greek word anapauso, a-n-a-p-a-u-s-o, from which we get our word pause. So the word rest here also means to refresh one. What Jesus was saying, You come unto me, all you that are being, growing weary under the labors and the burdens, and I will give you a pause that refreshes.

Now, one of the second important things He says here is in verse 29, Take my yoke upon you, learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest under your souls. It's important that you and I understand what kind of rest He's talking about. Had He been talking about physical rest, He would have simply had to say, If you go take yourself a good nap, you'll be all right, because you can work three or four days a whole week and be up late at night and struggling, whatever it might be, and then you get one good night's rest of eight, nine, or ten hours, depending upon your temperament and your disposition, your makeup. One good solid night of rest will overcome the weariness of a week or so. But He's not talking about that, so we know what to do to get physical rest. He's talking about a form of rest that is far more complicated than physical exhaustion.

He's talking about a rest from within, because, you see, when the emotions get tired and the mind, so to speak, our whole inner being becomes weary, whether it's exhaustion over situations and circumstances, whatever it might be, when the inside gets tired and the inside gets weary and the inside gets borne down, it takes more than one good night's rest or one good prayer to take care of that. So He says, You come to me. I'll take the burden off you. I'll give you a yoke, He says, but the yoke that I'm going to give you is easy compared to the burden that you're carrying at the present time.

Now, let me ask you this. How many of you, without raising your hand, of course, how many of you would have to say, I'm really burdened down. I really feel the weight. I really feel deep inside of me that there's something going on that I don't know how to handle. It may be that you have a financial burden. It may be that you have a burden within your home, within your family. It could be that you have a burden because of a relationship with someone else.

And, you see, little by little it's gotten heavier and heavier and heavier in your life. What I want to show you is that Jesus Christ will make it possible for you to become unburdened. That is, He will make it possible for you to lay that burden down so that you do not have to carry it. God never intended for us to walk around all burdened down, all down in the dumps, all sad and weary and worn. I'm living for Jesus, praise the Lord. I've got my burden. I'm carrying my cross for the Lord. He doesn't expect for us to do that. He expects us to be buoyed up because of our relationship to Him and light because of the fact that we have Christ living within us.

So that the person who's all burdened down with their burdens and heartaches and cares is a terrible testimony of what Jesus Christ does. So I want us to see what He's saying here when He says that you and I are to come and to bring our burdens and what He's referring to primarily are these inner burdens, weighty things we carry in our mind, weighty things we carry in our spirit within our soul, within our whole emotional being. Now listen to what He says. He says, take my yoke upon you. Now He says, you give me something and I'm going to give you something.

Now watch that. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. My yoke is easy. My burden is light. Now He says, if you want to get rid of that burden, there is something that is required. Now listen, you cannot violate the principles of Scripture.

Now watch this. You cannot violate the principles of Scripture. You cannot willfully knowingly disobey God and come to God and say, Lord, I want to lay this on you. You said you'd heal all amount of sickness and disease. I'm coming to you on the cross.

I believe that Jesus Christ's blood took care of all things, sin, sickness, everything. I'm asking you in Jesus' name to heal me. Amen. Hallelujah. Praise to God because I'm healed because you said I was. I want to tell you it ain't going to happen.

So we have to ask, first of all, what made me sick? If it is my willful disobedience, I've got to repent of that. I've got to deal with that. And I've got to make whatever changes need to be made in my lifestyle to show God that I don't intend to do the same old thing and just whip out a little prayer and ask him to heal me on the basis that he said he would. Yes, he will heal. He'll heal all manner of sickness and disease.

And some of the worst he has to deal with is not physical things, but internal emotional, mental, spiritual sickness that he deals with. So when he says, you come unto me, he says, you give me your burden, I'll give you my yoke. All right now, when we say, how do you lay a burden down?

How do you lay it down? Well, there are several things that I think are important. Now watch this. Depending upon the nature of the burden, listen to me. Some things they will not weigh very heavy, but it's something that you and I see has the potential of being a very weighty matter in our life that can ultimately destroy us. If we are wise, we'll deal with that thing, whatever it might be. If we let it lie there long, little by little, it's going to become very, very weighty. So what do we do with these things that could become very weighty? Let's take, for example, here's a fellow who sees a little financial problem coming.

If he doesn't face up to it and deal with it, finally, he can lose his business, his home, his automobile, and be in total bankruptcy. So the question is, how do we deal with these things in our life that become great major burdens bearing us down, distracting us from what God wants us to do, distracting us from those who are about us, and seemingly wanting or desiring or have the capacity to crush our very life? How do we lay them down? Well, let me say first of all that it's difficult at times. You can't just hop down, have a little prayer, tell God you're laying it down, get up and walk off. You've already done that. If it were that easy, I wouldn't even be preaching about it.

I wouldn't even be wasting my time because it'd be a waste of time for something that simple. It's not that simple. So first of all, it is difficult. And one of the things we have to deal with is our faith. Jesus says, you come unto me. He didn't say go to them. He said, come unto me. I will give you rest. That is the promise of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we're to bring it to him personally.

That means, if we're going to do that, it must be a deliberate act on our part, not just something I did in passing on the way to have my little night prayer, morning prayer. It is a deliberate act on my part to lay this burden down. Secondly, I must lay something down before him that is definite, not Lord, you know all my burdens. Oh God, I'm so burdened down.

Please help me with my burdens. That won't work because listen, you and I need to tell him what we're dealing with. Listen, we need to tell him what we feel the burden is. And if what we're telling him the burden is, it's not he will show us the true nature of what we're dealing with. We may say, oh Lord, my problem is this. And God may show us, no, your problem is not that. Your problem is this over here.

You just think it's this. That's the problem we've got to deal with. Oh, I don't want to deal with that. I must be willing to deal with whatever he brings to my mind. So first of all, I've got to be very definite about it.

I've got to be deliberate about bringing it to him. Then I must be willing to be open and honest and face whatever he requires of me. Now listen, when he said, come unto me all ye that are growing weary, heavily laden, you're toiling. Lay your burden before me. I'll give you a pause in your light that will refresh you and energize you. And you can leave that burden.

Just lay it down. One of the keys here, listen, is not only to be definite and to be deliberate about it, but I think that for the most part, for most people, desperation is the key. Now listen, desperation is the door of deliverance for most people who are carrying burdens.

And don't forget that. Desperation is the door of deliverance. You see, most of us won't really deal with a heavy burden unless we're desperate. Desperation is not the worst thing in the world. In fact, sometimes it's the best thing and it is the last step before deliverance.

It's the door into deliverance because when you get desperate enough, you'll be willing to do what I want to show you here. Let's say, for example, so we will not get personal in any way, let's just say that you have a financial burden. It could be a burden in your home, a burden with your son or your daughter, your son or daughter's on drugs, or they're getting ready to marry somebody they shouldn't, or they've already gotten married and they're thinking about getting a divorce, or you've got a problem in your vocation. You know, you have to decide what it is. I can't tell you what your burden is.

Now watch this. You want to get rid of your burden. You get by yourself, hold your hands up there before God.

You can be up next to the bed or somewhere that's sort of comfortable because you're about to get uncomfortable. Now, if you want to give it to God, here's what you do. You just tell Him that you're bringing your burden to Him. At the same time, what you want to do while you're lifting it up to Him, you want to have a verse of scripture to or something that He brings to your mind.

You may want to remind Him that He said He would supply all of your needs according to His riches in glory. Little by little while you're praying and reading the scriptures and quoting them to Him, little by little without you even realizing what's happening, without anything on your part, any volition on your part, your arms are going to start coming down. You're going to think, oh, that they ache, and I mean they just ache right here in my joints.

Oh, you see what's happening? God is giving you a physical impression so you will not forget. You're lifting up to Him a burden that you really can't because, you see, you can't really hold your hands up there but so long regardless of how strong you are. Some may be able to do it longer than others, but you won't be able to do it very long.

Five minutes maybe if you're lucky, maybe somebody a little bit longer than that, but as you're talking to Him little by little as you lift it to Him and the pain gets a little worse, what you're saying is, God, I can't do it and physically you can't hold them but so long. What God wants us to do is to come to the point of desperation where we absolutely and totally and completely have to give it to Him because we cannot hold that there any longer. We can't carry these burdens any longer. They've already got us to the point of almost stifling our creativity.

We are losing our energy and mentally and emotionally they're beginning to bear in on us. We're beginning to almost get paralyzed in our activities and the people around us are beginning to suffer and little by little when you get them about stretched out about like this they probably begin to hurt the most and little by little the more you pray and the more you give it to Him and you tell Him, oh God, I cannot handle it, you're going to have to take it and before long your hands are going to be right down by your sides and you can hardly budge them. You see, it's all that important.

It depends if you want to keep on carrying it or if you want to give it to Him. Let me tell you what you've just done. You've just demonstrated before God that there's something you can't do. You can't really hold that up there, Lord, but so long.

God, I can't carry this but so long. And little by little as you what? Empty your heart, watch this, confess your sin, repent to Him, yield to Him, submit to Him.

You know what He's done? Little by little it's like He's taken the burden off of you and as He takes the burden off your hands come down and when they get down by your side you've laid the burden down before God and here's what you've really done. What did He say? He said, come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden and I'll give you rest. He said, take My yoke upon you. A yoke is a restraint.

A yoke is a symbol of submission. You know what you've done? You've said, Lord, I can't bear this thing any longer.

I don't know how to deal with them. I can't correct this and so, Lord, I'm giving it to you. And little by little as the weight of it has borne you down, what has the Lord God done? But as you have submitted your life and your spirit and your circumstances and the total mess, whatever it might be, the total situation, totally out of your hands, as you've submitted to Him and your hands have dropped, what have you done? Well, the strain's gone because your hands are down by your side and you have submitted yourself to Almighty God that whatever He wants to do, you've totally committed yourself to Him.

And I want to tell you something. If you will accept that by faith, what you have just demonstrated, you can walk away from that and I want to tell you hallelujah and praise God, I know it works. I know it works for six different burdens I've laid down and I've laid them down long enough to give the devil a chance to attack me and tempt me and try me and each time I can say, don't give me that. I still know how that feels. I know that I gave that to God and I know He said He would take it.

I know He's taken it because there is not one single reason for me not believing He's taken it. The whole act gives you a point of reference and gives you a physical demonstration of what you literally feel internally. I can't hold it any longer. And my friend, God Almighty is willing to free you right now and I want to encourage you to get somewhere by yourself on your knees with an open Bible and simply do what I just challenge you to do and God will free you of that burden. He will take it off of you upon Himself and all He places upon you is His light and easy restraint and submission to His perfect will for your life. Now somebody, you, you're not saved. You say, well, can I do that?

And the answer is no. The only thing that you can lay down before Almighty God is all of your sin. When you're willing to give Him all of your sin, when you're willing to give Him your unrighteousness, your rebellious spirit, your violation of His principles and you tell Him, oh God, I'm trusting you to take this because I cannot bear my sin any longer. When you're willing to give Him your sin, He forgives you, pardons you, you become a child of God, then any other burden that comes, you can lift it and God will take it. But the first burden that every man, woman, young person must lay down is the burden of their sin.

Until you do that, all the other burdens you must carry for yourself. Thank you for listening to How to Lay Your Burdens Down. 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.