Try Softer: Finding Rest | Part 1

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for tuning in.

Today's my 42nd birthday.

Sure.

For my 40th, so young, thank you.

I appreciate that.

For my 40th, I uh my wife and I got away for two days, and my birthday obviously January.

And so it's always a time of reflection.

So, you know, New Year, uh, and then new year for my life, uh, and so lots of those sort of things.

And we get away, we got two days away.

And one of the things we do around the new year is Jenny Allen comes out with this thing called a dream guide.

And it's just this tool, asks you lots of different questions to help you look back on the past, process, grieve some things, uh, understand your present, look forward.

And so we spent a couple days having these deep conversations.

And two years ago, right around this time, it was actually rainy.

Uh, who could have figured?

And um and we're by a fire, and looking over the ocean is beautiful.

And I think this is probably true for most of us that we live life at such a pace, we're constantly going.

And if you're in the kid season of life, like it's just a blur, right?

You're just like going that you need these moments to stop and to gain perspective, to let your soul catch up, and then to realize you ever have somebody ask you, like, how are you doing, and you're not really sure?

I think that's most of us, most of the time, in Silicon Valley.

How are you doing?

I think good.

I don't know.

I really don't have a I'm not sure, right?

Like, how are we doing really?

And here's what we landed on.

The pace and way that we have done life the first half of our lives, especially that kid portion of it, is not the way we want to do life the second half of our life.

We our fundamental conclusion was this that we are really good doers.

Jenny and I are really good doers, we're fantastic doers.

Give us a task, give us a problem, hello, boom, let's go to it.

Um, we're really bad beers.

Really bad at being present.

And as a result, live a full, fast, busy, get-it-done, rushed life.

And as we sat and as we evaluated and as we looked at where we're at, we're going, that's not really the life we want.

And maybe you felt that way.

Maybe you feel this way.

And for me, in looking inside, this has been actually a few year journey of unlearning some ways of how I've gone about life and maybe even thought life should work.

You see, what's interesting is I think in our day, in our culture, we've been trained to try harder when things aren't going well, haven't we?

We do more, we push through, and then what do we say?

Well, fake it till you make it, right?

You put on a smile and you grin and you you think this is just how life is supposed to be, and you don't realize the person that you're following that you think has it all together, they're faking it too.

And if it's not working, you just need to grit your teeth and get through it.

You know, we have this phrase that at first you don't succeed, help me out.

Try, try again.

Yeah, here's one of the things that I've found, and maybe you found too, that often trying harder only creates more stress and anxiety and leaves us overworked and overwhelmed, doesn't it?

And so we began to wrestle with this question a couple years ago.

What if there's a different way to live?

Then this fast-paced try harder.

And what if the abundant life Jesus offers us isn't found in trying harder?

Isn't it insidious how that begins to trans like like begin and get into our way that we do our Christian spiritual life?

I just need to try harder.

I just need to try harder to be a better person.

I just need to try harder to get closer to God.

I just need to try harder, and maybe that's the impetus for many of your goals this year is this weight of shame of not measuring up, and I just need to try harder.

And what if the secret to the life you always wanted wasn't found in trying harder, but trying softer.

Came across this line, trying softer, uh, from my wife.

She was listening to the Comers, um, their podcast.

Feeling Diane Comer will have them in a couple weeks.

They're amazing.

They have this incredible podcast called Intentional Parenting Podcast, and Diane mentioned this book, Try Softer.

And I was like, oh my gosh.

What in the world is that about?

She ordered it, it was on her bedside table.

I stole it.

Um because it began to sum up the aching in my soul, it began to sum up some things that I've been wrestling and wondering, like, like, no, how in the world do you do that?

I've been trying harder my whole life, and it doesn't seem to producing the life that I really want or the person I really want to be.

So, what does trying softer look like?

Today we began a series called Try Softer.

Who would have thought?

Would you go ahead and say that to your neighbor?

Try softer.

On this journey, I don't know.

How many people did you tell?

I mean, it's just like this is uh softer, softer, softer, softer, softer.

Uh as I've been in this process, in this journey of just learning, okay, what does this look like?

What is a new approach to the way of going about life?

I I came across this story by a guy named Dallas Willard, and I've quoted him many times.

Dallas Willard uh was a philosopher, um, taught philosophy at US UCSC or USC, not UCSC, uh USC, and he also wrote incredible books on spiritual formation, one of the great Christian thinkers of our day.

Uh, and he told this story, and it so resonated with me, about how I've been going about life.

And I remember him like this story is being told was he was out cutting his lawn and he knew that his lawnmower needed the blade to be changed.

So uh that particular day, he's got the lawnmower flipped upside down, he's got his wrench out, and there's a there's a nut on top of the blade that you have to get off.

And he's out there and he's just cranking on it as hard as he can, and he keeps going and he can't figure it out.

He's going, do I need more leverage?

Do I need something longer?

Uh, you know, and then his neighbor comes by and sees what he's doing and says, Oh, you know what?

I had to do that a while back, and you know what I realized?

It is um the threads uh on the lawnmower are reverse threaded.

Meaning, righty tidy, lefty loosey does not work in this case.

It's opposite.

And so it doesn't matter how much of torque and effort he put into pulling that that this direction, it would not work.

And it didn't matter how hard he tried.

You see, I think that's where many of us find ourselves in trying to unlock, okay, this abundant life, this flourishing life, the life that Jesus offers, the life we actually long for, and yet we're just kind of pulling on things and going like it's not working.

And the reality is, is we need to approach life in a completely different way, a try softer way.

And to begin, we're gonna look at Jesus' invitation.

It's an incredible one, and it's an invitation to approach life in a completely different way.

If you got your Bibles, would you open up to Matthew chapter 11, verse 28?

Matthew 11:28

Yeah, in it, Jesus' invitation says this come to me, all who are weary and burdened.

Anybody weary this morning, go ahead, raise your hand up.

Yeah, welcome to the club.

We're not alone.

And I'll give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.

For I'm gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burdens light.

Come to me.

All who are weary and heavy laden.

Now, maybe you've had this experience with this passage before, like I've had.

How many of you have heard this passage before?

Go ahead, raise your hand.

Oh, yeah, most of you.

I grew up in the church, so I've heard this many times.

And maybe you've had this experience.

I've had this.

I looked at that and I go, uh-uh.

Uh-uh.

Rest for my soul.

Your burdens light.

Your burden doesn't feel light.

It feels heavy.

I'm exhausted.

Like I showed up, Jesus.

Shoot, I even became a pastor.

It feels heavy.

It feels wearisome.

That doesn't seem to be true to me.

How do you experience the easy yoke of Jesus?

How do you enter in a relationship with him where it actually brings refreshment to your soul?

In your notes, I gave you what I is I call it's a mechanical outline of the text.

I do this when studying it, kind of helps you begin to see some connections this way.

I want you to just take some notes.

We're going to dive into the text, and then I'm just going to give you some observations about Jesus' invitation.

Uh first, he says, Come to me, and then you'll notice if you just draw a line straight down, what does it mean to come to him?

Well, it actually means something very specific.

It's not just like, what up, Jesus?

You know, I'm here.

It actually means coming to him.

He's going to qualify, yeah, qualify what that means.

He says, Coming to him is taking my yoke.

Now, what is a yoke?

Well, we know a yoke is, you know, that wooden contraption that's attached to an oxen that helps pull a load or a plow, right?

It's two oxen moving together.

In Jesus' day, uh, that was certainly true.

And a yoke for uh was used metaphorically, so that a rabbi had a yoke.

It was considered their particular interpretation of the Torah or the teachings of Moses, the law uh or the writings of Moses.

And so every rabbi had their particular yoke or their teachings, the way they interpreted the law of Moses and how to go about life.

And so Jesus is saying, coming to him is taking my particular view about life and teachings, and then notice what he says, and learn from me.

In fact, right next to it, write this watch how I do it.

Watch how I do it.

Come to me.

What does that look like?

I'm gonna take on your teachings, I'm gonna take on your understanding of the way life is to be, and then watch how you do life.

You know, we watch a lot of different people for giving us our cues about how to do life, and Jesus says, Would you just watch my life?

Would you watch the way I go about life?

Would you watch the way I interact?

Would you watch my pace of life and my responses?

And you just begin to learn from me how to do life.

And then notice who the invitation's to.

All of you who are weary and burdened.

He's going, if if this is a day you walked in discouraged, down, burdened, man, this is a good day, Jesus is saying, This is for you.

And what I love, if you walked in with a weary heart, and if you just draw that line down again, for I am gentle and humble of heart, a weary heart finds the welcome arms of a gentle and humble heart of Jesus.

See, because I think this part of it too is the reason we won't approach and we reason we won't come, we were weary.

It's like we're not sure what we're gonna find.

We kind of have this picture of Jesus here, but we go like when I approach God, oh my goodness, is he gonna be harsh?

Is he gonna be down on me?

Am I not good enough?

And he says, no, no, I'm gentle, I'm humble of heart.

And right now you're carrying a load that's breaking your back.

And my yoke is easy.

Right next to easy, right?

Well-fitting.

Well-fitting.

That's actually what that word means.

Uh, and do you remember um what Jesus' profession is, what he grew up doing before?

Yeah, he's a carpenter.

And so here's what's amazing is he probably made tons of yokes in his day.

Not jokes, yokes.

And he was stop it, stop it.

No dad jokes.

Um, but he did.

He made tons, probably made many yokes.

And a master carpenter, think about this, it would do two things with a yoke.

And so when he's describing this this to people, he's he's going, I've crafted this many times.

They would make a yoke that that was like uh perfectly fit to the oxen, intentionally designed so that it fit well.

It wouldn't uh rub or uh chafe in any way, it just landed perfectly so that they could carry the the load well.

And then what a master carpenter would do, you'd have two oxen next together.

He would take and design the yoke in such a way that the the greatest bearer of the burden would be on the strongest ox.

And so think about this of Jesus saying, Take my yoke, the yoke I'm carrying, the burden that I have, I actually am gonna carry the greater load.

You're just gonna come in alongside me and walk with me.

That's the picture here.

He says, Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden.

And then I'll give you rest.

Right next to rest, right refreshment.

I'll give you refreshment.

Like if you're weary, I want to refresh you and bring rest to your souls.

I like how one translator says it recover your life.

I think that's what many of us are looking for.

We're looking for something to bring and recover our life, and we're just going, like, I just feel caught up in the rat race.

And so, what is the secret to the easy yoke?

I just want to give you three observations from the text as we begin this journey of trying softer.

The first observation is this Jesus invites you to come to him, not work your way to him.

Jesus invites you to come, to approach him and not work your way to him.

Um Dane Ortland wrote this incredible book called Gentle and Lonely, 2021 is one of my uh books of the year.

Uh, and he he just unpacked this entire uh verse and just what it speaks of who Jesus is.

And he writes this the point in saying that Jesus is lowly is that he is accessible for uh accessible for all his resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, for his supreme uniqueness and otherness.

No one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ.

He's like, I am humble and lowly and gentle of heart.

I am approachable, come to me.

And by the way, I actually think Christians need to hear this more than you think you need to hear.

See, because we understand that grace gets you into the kingdom of God.

Grace saves you, for it is by grace.

What is grace?

God's unmerited, undeserved favor.

There's nothing you can do to earn it, it's his gift freely to you.

But here's what we forget is grace takes you the whole way.

Grace is what keeps you there, grace is what empowers you through.

It is his grace the whole way.

And something shifts, doesn't it?

Something shifts where we realize grace got us in, but then we start to work for it.

It starts to become a performance.

Oh, I gotta get up, I gotta do this, I gotta do this.

And Jesus says, No, come to me.

Come to me.

Where is rest found?

I will give you rest.

Who has the rest?

Help me out.

Thank you.

And by the way, in church, if you just answer Jesus, you're like right 90% of the time.

He says, when you come to me with all of you, you don't need to work your way, you don't need to unburden yourself, you don't need to fix up yourself, you don't need to clean up because I'm a guest showing up.

Just come.

It's personal.

It's not a performance.

It's personal.

The refreshment our souls long for is found in the person of Jesus.

Like the longing and the craving.

And for some, it's getting back, as Jesus would say to the church in Ephesus, getting back to your first love.

Those moments, remember those moments when you first became a follower of Jesus and and your heart was on fire and you were filled, and getting back to that reality of his great love for you and being overwhelmed by it.

First observation.

Jesus invites you to come to him, not work your way to him.

Second observation, by the way, Jesus says your weariness and struggle is what qualifies you.

Think about this.

If you read the Gospel of Matthew just beforehand, Jesus actually points out and he gives a rebuke to a certain kind of people that were doing a certain activity.

And then right here, he qualifies and says, you know who this promise is for?

Weary, struggling people.

Like it qualifies you for this.

And so, by the way, if you are needing to be strong, if you have to be in control, if you need to make sure that you're figuring out how everything is perfect around you and trying to manage your image to make sure nobody sees the okay of your life, you won't experience this invitation.

See, we do image management, don't we?

And and and here's what we want.

We want a little bit of Jesus to come and address and fix our little lives here.

But we just want to go about our lives.

Here's what we want.

We want Jesus to do some sort of transaction for us, right?

I'm gonna come to you.

Hello, boom, rested, cool, now I go do my thing.

And he says, No.

I am the thing.

I am all of this.

See, your weariness and struggle is what qualifies you.

Jesus is not repulsed by your struggles, but he is moved.

Um, his first impulse is to move towards you.

He sees everything about you better than you know yourselves.

He sees the closed parts, he sees everything, and and and his first inclination is to be moved towards you.

And he and when he sees it, his response is, I'm gentle.

Some of you are not so gentle with yourself.

Jesus says, I'm gentle with you.

And I'm humble of heart that I would stoop low and get down and be moved towards you, and there's no depth or low uh that I won't go to be with you and be connected to you because I'm humble of heart.

I like how Frederick Del Bruner said it.

He's a New Testament scholar.

He writes this the needy are those to whom Jesus has consistently addressed himself and for whom he's always there.

Jesus' invitation goes out to all those for whom life has become a grind, for whom existence is labor laborious, to those, in a word, from whom the juice has gone out of life and all that's left is the rind.

Jesus says, your weariness is what qualifies you, your struggle, all who are weary, the weary are welcome with open arms.

And so if you're at the end of your rope today, if you're tired, if you're just ready, I'm done, I'm ready to give in, Jesus says, Come on.

Come on, I'm here for you.

First observation: Jesus invites you to come to him, not work your way to him.

Second, Jesus says your weariness and struggle is actually what qualifies you to experience his rest and refreshment.

Third, Jesus offers a new way to carry life that refreshes the soul.

Jesus offers a new way to carry life.

Now, isn't it interesting?

Think about this.

He says, Come to me all who are weary and heavy laden.

And then he says this line: take my yoke upon you.

For my burden is light.

Isn't that fascinating that Jesus, I mean, if you thought, like you see somebody that's weary, that's heavy laden, that's struggling, the first thing you would think to say is like, man, you need a vacation.

Right?

You need a break.

Do you just go, you're weary, you're heavily laden?

I got a seven-day all-inclusive trip to you know, Hawaii for you.

You're like, yeah.

See, because that's our fix.

Our fix is some form of escape, isn't it?

Not that we don't need breaks, so I'm I'm all for breaks and all for vacations, all those sort of things.

But our fix to the weariness is how do we escape it for a season?

Jesus offers entirely new equipment to carry the burdens of your life.

He says, I have a different yoke.

The yoke you're carrying is not well fitted to your flourishing, and it will be too heavy for you.

But if you put on my yoke, hello, I'm gonna carry the bigger load and it's gonna be well fitted.

It's not gonna chaff against you, and we're gonna do this together, but you gotta take on my way and my yoke.

I got brand new equipment for you to carry.

See, Jesus offers a new way to carry life that actually is refreshing to your soul.

I want you to notice where Jesus had said, take my yoke, and remember, uh, we have the oxen, but then it's also this metaphor for his teachings or way of life.

And he said, Learn from me.

Remember, I had you write down, watch how I do it.

Watch how I do life.

I mean, who is your example and how you're going about life?

Who are you patterning your life after?

Jesus' invitation is would you watch how I go about life?

How I do my pacing, and then begin to do the very same thing?

Could it be that the author of life actually knows how to do life?

We're actually going to spend the next several weeks talking about watching how Jesus did life and what does that look like to try softer and how to live that out in the ways that he did his life that are so counterintuitive to the ways we're going about life.

But here's the reality, and we all understand and experience trying harder isn't working.

We're just overwhelmed, overworked, filled with anxiety and stress.

He says, I have a new way to carry life.

Notice Jeremiah, he's actually kind of quoting Jeremiah in some instance here, Jeremiah 6, 16, where he says, Stand at the crossroads and look.

Ask for the ancient past, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.

But you said, We will not walk in it.

Jesus says, I'm the I'm the direction.

I'm the direction.

If you pattern your life after my life, you'll find rest.

To sum it up, if you want to experience the refreshing life of Jesus, you have to adopt stuff adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.

If you want to experience the easy yoke of Jesus, if you want that verse to move from being like, oh, that's a nice idea, but here's my experience.

Nuh-u-uh.

If you want it to be a uh-huh, then you have to adopt the lifestyle of Jesus.

And we'll spend the next several weeks looking at what that is specifically.

Close our time.

Have you ever had an unraveling moment?

Yeah, many.

Yeah, yeah.

Right, I think the last few years have created some of those perfect environments for us to unravel.

Have you ever had an unraveling moment in front of others?

Uh last year is May, I was at a pastor's retreat with a bunch of Bay Area pastors all over the bay.

Uh and we're getting away for I don't know, it was three or four nights, and it was a great time.

Was you know, some incredible people there, and and this whole idea of try-softer.

If you I was reading that book that Jenny had picked up, and like there was just a liveliness that this tension in my soul of like, okay, the way I'm going, I'm a pastor, and I'm not doing it, you know, isn't it amazing?

We we can know all the right stuff, but not actually put it into practice.

And just feeling the dissonance of my soul and like, okay, God, you're doing something.

I remember a guy named John Ortberg, who's a pastor and author, was there and he was teaching.

And I remember talking to him and going, like, oh, you know, this tri-softer.

And he was very gracious.

He'd done many talks, I found out later on it, but he pretended, like, oh no, that's interesting, Ryan, you know.

As I just like cried to him and just kind of sharing my soul.

And then there was a number of other uh people there, and we had a time where we were just kind of sharing like the pain, heartache, and pain of leading through the last several years and some of the grievances that people had walked through in pain and just hearing people's stories, which is like so like, wow, my gosh, I'm so sorry.

And I go to just like thank people, you know.

I just wanted to thank them for sharing like their stories.

And and as I go, that's all I was trying to do.

Thank you.

I just all I needed to go, man, thank you for sharing.

That's all that needed to be said.

And as I began to say those words, I had an unraveling moment in front of 30 of my not closest people I know.

And I don't even fully remember all the things I said.

I just began to break down and weep.

Because I've been trying hard.

And I've been ground down and tired and weary.

And it just all came out.

It was embarrassing.

Gosh, it's embarrassing.

I just wanted to go hide in the corner.

I wanted to leave.

I didn't want to see anybody else from the rest of the time.

I should have it together.

Like people came up to want to pray for me.

And I'm like, no, I should be praying for you.

I'm a pastor.

Well, you're a pastor too, I guess that can work.

And I think that's the reason we don't lean into those struggles and those weariness to open ourselves up to Jesus to come to him to take on, because it's it's embarrassing.

We want to have it all together.

We're afraid if we actually begin to speak or talk, the unraveling happen, and maybe we'll not be put back together.

Or there will be no end.

That was one of those breaking points for me.

Turning points.

So embarrassing.

John Orberg then became a bit of a friend through that time and mentor, and met with him a few times again crying.

And I remember him during one of the times saying this line, Dallas Willard was one of his mentors.

And this is what Dallas had said to him, and it had been on his desk for years that he would review daily.

Said, Ryan, you must arrange your days so that you're experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in your everyday life with God.

You must arrange your days.

You're not a victim to your days.

You must arrange your days so that you're experiencing deep confidence and contentment and joy in your everyday life with God.

Beginning the process of arranging what does that look like?

Well, it begins right here.

This is where we'll close today and we'll pick up next week.

The first step to try and softer is to open yourself up to Jesus.

First step.

The first step of arranging your days to experiencing deep joy, confidence, and contentment in God is actually it feels like, man, haven't I kind of already done this?

I'm here, Ryan.

I'm kind of open.

Well, let me ask it maybe in a different way that might be a little more clarifying.

Are there any areas of your life that are closed off to him?

Are there any areas that you don't want to show him?

Any areas where you go, I actually want to do it my way and not your way?

Like I prefer my yoke.

We all live under a yoke.

We're all have a burden.

I prefer my yoke.

At least I get a call.

Yeah, it's a little itchy and it's chafing, but but I chose it.

I don't want your yoke.

Is there any area?

Maybe it's a relationship.

Maybe it has to do with your future.

Like, like I don't, Jesus, I I if I actually open myself up to you and your future, you're gonna send me to some God off place.

I'm talking to God, okay.

You awful place.

Maybe it's your finances.

Maybe it's an addiction, maybe it's a thought pattern, maybe it's some habitual sin where you go, is there any area that's closed off?

The first step in trying softer is simple, but it's significant.

Come to me.

I'm weary and I'm heavy laden, and I'm afraid that if I actually begin to unravel it, I may not be put together.

But here's what I'm trusting: is that that invitation is for every one of us, broken, weary travelers, and you will give me refreshment.

You will recover my life, you said it and it will be done.

Frankly, I'm trying tired of trying harder and I'm tired of my own yoke.

It's time to try yours.

And so, how about you?

What do you need to open up to Jesus?

Would you open yourself up?

Heavenly Father, thank you for your grace and time this morning.

Thank you for your love.

God, thank you that we're just weary travelers trying to navigate, and you say, Oh, come, child.

And that when we call upon you, we don't find a God with crossed arms tapping his toe, but we find a Savior, gentle and lowly, humble of heart, who stoops low into all of it and draws us in.

And God, would you give my friends courage to open the spaces that they've locked up and kept hidden to you?

Let you in, take on your ways.

May we watch how you do it and begin to follow you.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

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