Message - Rest For Your Soul (Part 4)

You know, if if you ever walk in to church with a heavy burden, I hope you know that you don't have to leave with it.

That a lot of what we get to do together is uh is bring stuff with us here and then drop it and let the Lord handle it.

That's in a lot of ways what we're here to do.

And so when we have Sundays where there's heavy stuff going on, good news, we have a God who can handle some weight.

We have a God who can take our burdens.

In fact, that's what we've been talking about for the last several weeks.

We've been in a series called Rest for Your Soul.

Rest for your soul.

And I want to read the words of Jesus.

This series is just a study of a very, very small but very powerful teaching of Jesus.

Matthew 11, 28 through 30, Jesus said, Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens.

Like I said earlier, this has been a heavy week.

And he promises, I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you, let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

My yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.

The burden I give you is light.

We've looked at this through a variety of lenses.

And uh, oh, there we go.

We're just having fun with the lights this morning.

Um, it's all good, it'll come back on.

So we we've looked at this through a variety of lenses and and really examined some of the things that Jesus said.

And today we're gonna talk specifically about letting go.

There we go, right when the lights come on.

If you're new to his hands, we we're super professional.

We know exactly what we're doing.

We are no, we're actually we don't sweat the small stuff here.

I love that.

Um I don't know if you've ever had a situation in life where you found yourself carrying unexpected weight.

Facebook does this funny thing where uh it will send you pictures sometimes of yourself a long time ago, which is kind of cruel, you know, because if you're like me and you're in the place that I'm in in life, you're like, it's like Facebook going, hey, remember when you were in much better shape?

Um remember those days?

And it's so it's it's it makes you mad because I already don't like Facebook.

Now I really don't like it, but I've put all the pictures of my children there, and so I'm stuck.

Every once in a while, though, Facebook will send me a picture, and I'm really I'm grateful for it because I go, Yes, I remember that.

That was a great day.

I want to show you guys a picture real quick.

This was eight years ago.

Um, ooh, it's see-through.

That's weird.

Um let me move out of the way so it doesn't look like I'm possessed in the picture.

No, don't follow me.

There we go.

There we go.

It's just getting worse and worse and worse.

There we go.

All right.

Picture.

I don't know what's going on.

Okay.

That is me eight years ago.

That is my oldest who turns 11 in like a week.

That is him at three years old, and my youngest is actually the same age.

Uh, we we went on a family trip in North Georgia.

We went to Hiawassee, and uh that picture was taken at this really cool waterfall.

And if you ever have a chance to go to North Georgia, if you like to hike, there's a hike there.

Many of you have probably taken it.

It's called the High Shoals Falls Hike.

Two really beautiful waterfalls.

And the hike's not that tough.

It's about it's about a three-mile hike, so a mile and a half one way and then back.

But uh the first half is all downhill.

It's easy.

It's super easy.

Uh, you see the waterfalls, it's beautiful, and then you go you know uphill for a mile and a half, which is not it's not like the hardest thing in the world, but it is, it is, you'll sweat a little bit if it's hot.

So that day we walked down, and Liam, who was three at the time, loved it.

He was having a blast.

And when it came time for the picture, he said, Dad, put me on your shoulders.

So I did, and then he said, Don't put me down.

Um and I was like, hey, but we're gonna walk back up.

He's like, Nope, I'm done.

I've walked all that I'm gonna walk today, and you're gonna carry me on your shoulders on the way back.

And it's hard because when you're in public and there's other people around, you can't quite be the parent that you want to be sometimes, where you're just like, no, you're walking.

But if you're dragging a three-year-old kid up a hill, you know, and people are it's just it's it's a someone might go to your church, you have no idea.

So I was like, all right, let's do this.

And I I went the entire rest of the way with him on my shoulders.

Now, now some of you guys are really into fitness, and you may have uh have done something called rucking before.

I have some friends who ruck, uh I think that's a verb, and they uh they put heavy backpacks on and then they go do stuff with a heavy backpack on.

Uh that's kind of like what it was, except in this scenario, the backpack is alive and uh and it won't stop moving.

Um may have wet his pants, uh, you're not quite certain.

You never know.

You smell something, and and you have to tell the backpack all the time, hey, I've got you.

You don't need to choke me out.

I'm not gonna drop you.

Like when you hold kids on your shoulders, they think they're gonna fall and they just they strangle you.

It's like they grab a hold of you.

You've maybe had that experience.

So um I found myself carrying some weight I wasn't expecting to carry.

And the truth is, at the end of the day, I don't I didn't mind.

I I love my kids, and I actually don't mind carrying them.

In fact, as they get older, sometimes it's something I kind of long for, like, hey, you want me to pick you up?

And they're like, no, don't do that ever again.

And uh and I miss it.

I miss it.

If you could have taken a picture of me at the top of the hike when it was all said and done, I still would have smiled.

I just would have been drenched in sweat.

So I wasn't expecting that weight.

And that's the way life goes sometimes.

And sometimes we find ourselves carrying weight that we didn't expect to carry, and we can manage, and sometimes we even we even sort of volunteer for it.

We love people and and situations pop up, and we're like, hey, I'll I got you, I'll I'll do this.

But over time, the weight can add up, and we find ourselves burdened.

It's interesting when I when I ask people how they're doing, the the most common thing people say to me is usually it's something like this, you may have heard this, this is like our normal response.

They'll say, Oh, it's good, it's good, I'm busy.

Busy.

And usually when someone says, I'm busy, my token response is good, that's good, it's good to be busy.

But they don't always look that excited when I say that.

And I think what people are actually saying more often is I'm burdened.

They're like, Yeah, it's good.

Burdened, carrying a lot of weight, not really sure how I'm gonna do it.

And I look at them and go, that's good.

You know, no, it's not.

Life is heavy.

Life is heavy.

But like I said a few minutes ago, following Jesus and the experience that we get to have together as a church, as a family, it's an opportunity for us to let go of burdens that we don't need to carry.

That teaching of Jesus, come to me.

All of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, I will give you rest.

And we've gone through this bit by bit.

If you haven't been here, feel free to catch up on online, use our mobile app, our website, however you want to do that.

But but I can break this down for you really simple.

There's four parts to what Jesus says.

Today we focus on the last part.

The first part was come to him, come to Jesus.

He says, Come to me.

He's the source of rest.

And it's not just rest for your body, it's rest for your soul.

Your soul is a very deep part of who you are.

You could actually say it's it's basically you.

It's your thoughts, your will, your hopes, your dreams, your emotions, it's all of that kind of rolled in together.

You need rest for your soul because you cannot thrive in life without a healthy soul, and you can't have a healthy soul without a rested soul.

And Jesus offers you rest for your soul.

The world you live in, no rest.

Because our world is actually defined more so every day by being in a state of unrest.

We're really good as a culture of being in a state of unrest.

And so many of the symptoms that we see in our culture right now, so many of the things that define life in America today anxiety, fear, depression, anger, outrage, all of it is just souls not at rest.

Jesus offers us rest for our soul, but he's the source.

We have to come to him for it.

Number two, he says, Let me lead you.

We've got to let Jesus lead us.

He says, Take my yoke upon you.

In other words, tie yourself to me.

Tether yourself to me, and and and I'll show you how to live.

Jesus is a great leader.

He's not incompetent, he's not hesitant, he's not egotistical, he's not abusive, he is He's incredibly intelligent and capable and strong and powerful, but also compassionate and gentle and humble.

He is a leader worth following.

We've got to let Jesus lead us.

Last week we looked at the third thing that he says was, Let me teach you.

We've got to see Jesus as our teacher.

Because we live in a culture that is filled with would-be teachers.

Just hop online and there's always someone who's willing to share their perspective, and they they really believe that you need their perspective.

Turn on the television, stream whatever program, and it's filled with talking heads.

It's filled with people telling you what you ought to think about the world, about other people.

And it's amazing.

I was thinking about this so much this last week or two, is so many of the people that you listen to, so many of the teachers, we don't often use that terminology, we don't see it like that, right?

It's a person on TV, not a teacher.

But if you listen to someone on a regular basis and you find yourself nodding your head, they're teaching you and you're accepting that teaching.

So often the result of those teachings is that you're kind of fired up.

And there's a lot of angst, and you walk away like, yeah, that is right.

Those people are wrong, and they're the problem.

And we should do something to stop them, and it just depends on which side you're you're looking at in our culture right now.

It's the same message, it's just the other side is the enemy.

If you sit under those teachings, you often feel hopeless, that the world is just in a constant nosedive.

There's very little hope.

But if you sit under the teachings of Jesus, you never feel that way.

If you sit under the teaching of Jesus, you would never walk away hopeless.

It would never make any sense to walk away hopeless.

You would walk away with a powerful hope, you would walk away with peace in your spirit.

You would walk away not with animosity toward anyone, but you would walk away with genuine love and a genuine desire to serve people.

That's what happens when you sit under the teaching of Jesus.

We've got to see him as our teacher.

As Jesus followers, I know not all of us in the room have maybe made that decision, not all of us watching, but but if you have, you've got to be just as familiar with what Jesus said as you are with what he did.

So listen to the teachings of Jesus.

And then finally, today, the last part is let go.

Let go.

We come to Jesus, we let him lead us, we let him teach us, and then we let go.

And we're not very good at that.

And so there's a word I'm gonna give you right now.

I want us just to put a mental pin in this.

We'll come back to it later.

How do we actually let go?

There's a word commitment.

Commitment.

Commitment is the key to letting go.

And I'll get to that here in just a second.

But I want to talk for a second about the idea of burdens.

Because we're all familiar with burdens.

I mean, quick show of hands.

Those of you online engage and we want to make sure we're all awake and alive.

Like, how many of you have carried a heavy burden, either emotionally, physically, in the last month?

Let's just go one month.

Carried a heavy burden.

Great.

We all know what that feels like.

I think it's important that we understand that those burdens don't come from God.

Sometimes we think in those terms.

Some of us maybe grew up in a religious culture that taught us that, yeah, God kind of likes it when we're carrying heavy burdens.

That's what he does.

He's the one that gives you the burdens.

It's like God looks at you sometimes and says, Hey, is life hard?

Well, not hard enough.

Here's something to do, you know?

And honestly, I talk to so many people who are trying hard to follow Jesus and they carry this guilt.

And they'll say things like, I just haven't read my Bible very much lately.

And look, it is good to read scripture.

It is as often as possible, because it's truth.

And our world needs a lot of truth.

But you have to realize that for almost all of human history, like, no one read the Bible every day.

Because well, mainly because no one could read.

You realize that Jesus didn't read the Bible every day?

Because he wouldn't have had a Bible.

Like, A, half of it hadn't been written yet.

Okay.

And B, in that time period, you didn't have a personal Bible.

That's not the way it worked.

The teachings and and and and the writings of the prophets, they were they were in scrolls that were kept at the synagogue, and at best you would have access to them every once in a while.

And so sometimes we put these pressures on ourselves that like almost no one in human history has ever lived with.

It's an amazing thing that we have scripture at our fingertips every day.

We shouldn't look at that and take it for granted.

That's not what I'm saying.

But I'm also saying we shouldn't make things laws that God never did, but we do that.

We we sometimes believe that God is all about giving us more to do.

So that you always feel like you're not doing enough.

We believe that God is the source of our burden sometimes.

And even if we go, yeah, I know that's not true, we still act that way.

But I want us to understand it, it's very vital that we understand this completely.

God is not the source of our burdens.

God does not desire us to carry heavy burdens at all.

And we actually see this all through scripture.

One of the earliest stories in the Bible is the story of these two trees.

The tree of life, which, by the way, if you're new and you see all these trees on the walls and like the tree on our logo, it's the tree of life.

It's our logo.

Represents a kind of relationship with God where you can live connected to Him, right?

We have the tree of life, and then we also have this other tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And even if you haven't grown up in church, you're probably familiar with the story of these trees to some degree.

It's become just a part of all culture, really, where there's the forbidden fruit, right?

And Adam and Eve, and they're they're tempted, and there's a snake there, which is weird, and it talks, which is weirder, uh, and it wants them to eat this fruit, and it's like a very strange story.

And they they eat the forbidden fruit, but the forbidden fruit was not sexual temptation, power, greed, wasn't any of those things.

It was knowing right from wrong.

The knowledge of what is good and what is bad.

That was the forbidden fruit.

God did not want us to know right from wrong, at least not at that point.

Why?

Because knowing right from wrong is a burden.

It's a burden.

I've got four kids, and now all of them are at an age where they know right from wrong, and I hate it.

Because my relationship with them is very different when they know right from wrong.

I mean, part of me longs for the days when my kids didn't know, they didn't know better.

And they they do stuff, and like I could at least say or even believe.

Ah, they just they didn't realize what they were doing.

But now they they do.

Even my my youngest at three, like, he knows.

He knows he's doing something he shouldn't do.

He lies to us all the time.

He sneaks candy.

My my youngest Eli is a thief.

Um he sneaks candy.

We have this system at home where we give tokens.

Uh, we have like a candy machine, like an actual candy machine that you put tokens in, and the kids get tokens and then they they do that.

It's really good portion control, by the way, if you want to use that.

Um and and so they'll get like MMs or something out of it, and he'll go around and he'll take his brothers and sisters' MMs when they're not looking.

And if you catch him, it's hysterical.

Because if you say, hey, Eli, he'll turn around, his hands are like this.

What do you have?

And he'll go, nothing and nobody.

I don't know why he throws in nobody.

Like it doesn't make any sense, but he thinks, nothing and nobody.

And we're like, what's in your hands?

You know, pull him, show us, and he'll kind of like, sometimes he'll like drop it.

And we have hardwood floors, so it just like makes a sound, and then he'll go, huh?

Magic, right?

Like, hey, I'm good.

He's a liar and a thief.

And he's only three years old.

Like, that's the direction he's heading.

That's why we bring our kids to church.

He needs, he needs Jesus.

You know, once as a parent, once your children know right from wrong, you have a responsibility to hold them accountable to that.

And in many ways, it's just it's much more enjoyable as a as a father to just not have to do that.

To just, when they do something wrong and terrible and they don't know better, you kind of laugh about it, you hold them.

And it's kind of like God wanted that type of relationship with us.

But once we ate the forbidden fruit and our eyes were open, now we have this burden.

And God never intended that.

And it's a burden, by the way, that we haven't carried very well.

Because let's face it, we often fail to live up to our own standards, right?

Like I disappoint myself on a pretty regular basis.

I don't even need anyone else to be disappointed in me most days.

Like, I'm plenty disappointed in myself.

Scripture actually talks about that.

1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 19 says, cling to your faith in Christ and keep your conscience clear.

1 Timothy 1:19

For some people have deliberately violated their consciences, and as a result, their faith has been shipwrecked.

When you deliberately go against your conscience, your own sense of right and wrong, it just messes you up.

It's a burden.

And it leads to shame and guilt and all kinds of weird behaviors, and we do a lot of damage to ourselves and to others just because we violated our own consciences.

And then you have religion which comes along and it piles onto that and says, Oh, you're disappointed in yourself, you haven't lived up to your own standard.

Well, wait till you hear what God's standard is.

That's what religion tends to do.

And Jesus came along and He made us, He made us know, He made us understand that He has no place for that.

Matthew chapter 23, verse 4, he says to the religious leaders, and of them, they crushed people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden.

Matthew 23:4

He couldn't stand that.

He couldn't stand it.

And so Jesus went around and he taught people and he loved people and he healed people and he freed people from the burdens that they carried.

The people that walked around feeling like failures, like they never measured up, they weren't good enough.

Those are the ones that Jesus said, Why don't you be my disciple?

I'm gonna use you to do miracles, I'm gonna use you to tell the world the good news that I've come.

Because Jesus knows the truth.

God the Father is not a burden giver, he is a burden taker.

His desire is not to give you some new challenge in life to make life harder.

His desire is to take burdens off of you and help you live a life that is easy.

I don't mean easy in the sense that there's no difficulties, but I mean easy in the sense that life suits you, that you're equipped to handle everything that comes your way, and you're not carrying anything that isn't necessary.

Jesus said, My burden is light, and I've been wrestling with that for the last few months because I carry heavy burdens.

And so if I carry heavy burdens, and Jesus says the burden I give you is light, that means that whatever burdens I'm carrying, if they're heavy, Jesus didn't give them to me.

I've picked those up myself.

Because we're really, really, really good at that, right?

We're really good at picking up burdens.

Some of us even kind of like, like it's our thing.

Like we're good at it.

We go out, we look for other people's burdens.

Like, tell me what happened.

I want to know.

And we carry all these people's stuff, and and we think that maybe we're we're we're meant to do that.

And there might be times that God does call you to bear a person's burden for a season.

But most of the time we're weighed down because we've picked stuff up that God never gave us.

And so we're carrying unnecessary additional weight.

You know, sometimes it's other people.

Sometimes you see something that you want to do, and you have that thought in your mind, like, should I do this?

I'm pretty busy right now.

Like I'm already pretty full, but uh it'll be fine.

And you've all had this experience, I'm sure, where you commit to something, and at first you're like, yeah, I can do this.

I'm excited.

And like two weeks later, you're like, how do I get out of this?

How do I never do what I said I would do?

I should have said no.

We just we do that.

We get burdened by all kinds of things.

I think one of the things we've kind of talked about a little bit already, especially during Lord's Supper this morning, we we find ourselves often burdened by brokenness.

We're burdened by the brokenness in our world.

We live in a broken world.

We live in a broken culture.

And I'm not saying that our culture is going down the tubes and all of this is irredeemed.

I'm not saying that at all.

I'm not a naysayer.

We cannot be cynical and be a Jesus follower.

It doesn't work that way.

Being a Jesus follower means being optimistic, always believing that God's got something planned.

When something terrible happens, our natural response is Jesus followers should be like, I wonder what God's gonna do this time.

But our culture is broken.

Our world is broken, and the brokenness impacts us, it affects us, and it burdens us.

We see injustice, we see hardship, we see tragedy, and it affects us, and it's harder than it used to be, by the way, because it used to be that, and this is like 75 years ago, not that far ago in human history, that you would only be burdened by like local stuff.

It would only be things that were really close in proximity that would burden you.

And maybe if there was a war or something major that happened in the world, you'd you'd take that on too.

But we live in a world now where you're aware of all the bad things happening all the time.

That's what that's what this constant access to information has done to us.

We're aware of everything going wrong at all times.

Even the headlines.

Like I laugh so often at the headlines on the news, because it's all generated, right, to get views and to make a profit.

And there'll be a headline that says, like, concern growing over new COVID strain.

And you're like, well, I wasn't concerned before I read that.

I think you're making the concern grow.

It's the world we live in.

We see all of the bad, we see all of it.

And so it's a burden.

We're burdened by brokenness.

You know what's crazy though is we're so good at picking up burdens that it goes even deeper than that.

We can become burdened by blessings.

That's where it gets really crazy.

There's probably at least one thing in your life, at least there has been at some stage in life.

There's probably at least one thing in your life that at one point in time you were like, thank you, God, this is a blessing.

I'm so grateful for this.

But somehow, in some way, it's grown to be a burden.

Sometimes that's a job, right?

You get a job and you're like, Yes, God, thank you for this job.

And then you find yourself upset about it.

Sometimes it's a relationship.

You know, at one point in time, you're like, this is great.

I'm so grateful for this relationship.

And now you're you're burdened by it.

I've done that so many times in my life.

I've turned I've turned blessings into burdens.

We're really good at picking up burdens.

So how do we how do we let them go?

So I want to bring us back to something that we said just a few minutes ago.

This word that I asked you to put a pen in, and it's the word commitment.

Let's talk for a second about commitment.

Our inability to commit to God is the source of our burden carrying.

And I'm gonna say something, but I don't want you to receive this in the way it's gonna feel.

So just know it's it's not what it seems.

A lot of us in the room are carrying burdens because you just haven't committed enough to God.

And if that hits you and you're like, well, now I feel burdened.

Because you just said I'm not committing enough.

Let me explain what I mean.

Proverbs, chapter 16, verse 3 says, Commit your actions to the Lord and your plans will succeed.

Proverbs 16:3

Now I know I know some of you in the room really well, and some of you in the room are very driven people, and you're reading this going, like, yeah, success does take commitment.

I agree.

If you want to succeed in life, you've got to commit, you've got to dig down deep, you've got to work hard.

You've got you've got to go, right?

You just have to go.

That's what commitment means.

And it's what commitment can mean.

But but not always.

Words are funny, they can have multiple meanings.

And so in our culture, when we say commit, we usually mean you know, dig down deep, find some strength, do it.

Um but there's another version of commitment.

We don't use this very often, usually actually only in a negative sense, but it's when you actually completely and totally let go of the responsibility of doing something and give it to someone else.

And so we might say someone was committed to a hospital.

Someone was committed to you know, maybe some psychiatric help.

And and in saying that, what we're saying is like, I've completely and totally given them the responsibility.

It's on their shoulders now.

That's that's been committed.

That's actually what this scripture is saying.

In fact, the the Hebrew word of Proverbs 16, 3 for commit is this word garal, or galal rather, and uh I don't really speak Hebrew, so it's a weird sound of it.

Galal.

Uh it means to roll away.

So I want to read this again.

Proverbs 16.3.

Uh roll away your actions to the Lord and your plans will succeed.

It's very different, right?

It was an agricultural term.

It was a term that you would use when you would roll a heavy uh object onto a cart to be pulled by an oxen.

You would galal, roll it away.

It says, roll away your actions to the Lord and your plans will succeed.

In other words, uh stop doing what you're doing and give it to God.

And then it will succeed.

That's that's a commitment.

Sometimes we're carrying heavy burdens because we're trying to do stuff ourselves that we're not meant to do.

And the answer is not for us to dig deeper and try harder and strive and strive and strive.

The answer is actually for us to say, Lord, I need you to take this.

I'm gonna give it to you.

I'm I'm not gonna deal with this anymore.

God, it's it's it's your problem now.

Now, what's hard for us sometimes is as people who love the Lord is like, yeah, is that okay?

Is it okay for me to actually say to God, hey, like this is this is your problem now?

There was a uh pastor I used to listen to when I was younger, and uh one time it was really cool, he he said something that I laughed so hard at, and I kind of sort of believed it, but also not really, but it stuck with me.

He said one time he uh he got a letter in the mail from American Express and he was behind on his payments.

And he said that he prayed, Lord, I hate to tell you this, but you owe American Express about$5,000, and so you're gonna need to take care of this.

And everyone in the room kind of laughed the same way, you know, like ha ha, it's so funny.

Um but then he was like, No, I'm serious.

Now we might say to ourselves, whoa, whoa, God didn't spend that money, you did.

But how many of you believe, and and again, show of hands, online, interact, how many of you believe that you belong to God?

That you belong to the Lord?

Okay.

So if if you're a child of someone, you belong to them, guess what?

When they break it, you buy it as a parent, right?

That's the way it works.

It's frustrating sometimes.

But you know, my children belong to me.

So as a father, at least not yet, because of their age, I don't get to say, hey, you know, I know they mess that up, but that was that was them, not me.

Like I didn't do it.

No, I mean, if they break it, I buy it because it because they belong to me.

You belong to the Lord.

So hear this.

If you're carrying a heavy burden because of something you've done wrong, because of a broken situation that you have responsibility for, that's God's.

And he's not mad about it.

That's the crazy part.

He actually wants you to give him your burdens.

He asks us to do that in scripture.

I'll give you a few examples.

Psalm 55, 22, give your burdens to the Lord and he will take care of you.

Do you believe that?

Give your burdens to the Lord and he will take care of you.

He will not permit the godly to slip and fall.

1 Peter 5, 7 says, Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.

How many of your worries?

All of them.

How many of your cares?

All of them.

Why?

Because he cares about you.

You belong to him.

He died for you, he purchased you by the blood of Jesus, the most precious price that's ever been paid.

He loves you that much, and he says, Give me your burdens.

Now, what's really cool about these scriptures?

I love words, and I really like to dig deep and see what words really mean.

What's really crazy about these scriptures is the word give, like it's a very specific word in both cases.

You know, there's a lot of different ways to give something to someone.

Like you can give something to someone in a really, a really gentle way, or you can be like, hey, if you don't mind, would you would you take this for for just a second?

I'm so sorry.

Like this, you can like give someone something apologetically, right?

Please, I I just I just need a break.

Sometimes my wife and I do that at home where we have to kind of tag team with the kids, and one of us will look at the other and be like, hey, I hate to do this to you, but I'm exhausted.

Can you just please just take them?

I'm so sorry.

And then you you go and you spend 10 minutes alone and you feel guilty.

Um but you need it.

And so uh that's not what it's saying.

The word that it uses forgive in both of these scriptures, it said it's God talking, give me your burdens, give me your cares, your anxieties, your worries, all that.

It's a word that means to throw.

Some translations actually say cast.

So so here's here's what it is.

I don't know if you guys have ever had a moment where someone's looked at you and said, think fast, and then they just throw something, and you gotta catch it.

You don't have an option, right?

It's not like they ask your permission, hey, I'm gonna throw something to you, be ready to catch it.

They just go, think fast.

You're like, whoa.

Like that's what it's saying to do.

Like, hey, God, think fast.

Here's my problem.

Like, that's how aggressive you can be in giving your cares to God and and giving him your burdens.

It's powerful, it's amazing.

You don't have to feel ashamed, you don't have to feel guilty, you don't have to feel like like you're a burden to God.

Please hear this.

You will never, ever, ever be a burden to God because he can handle it.

Like he can handle it.

He can do anything, he can take the weight, and he's he's asking you to cast your worries on him.

We need to believe that.

We need to live that way.

I remember when I first became the the the lead pastor here, and it was uh a little over seven years ago, which I'm just getting old, guys.

Um I'm kind of excited about that though, because I was only 30 at the time, and whenever people would meet me and they'd come here and like, oh, you're the pastor, I would say, yeah.

And I felt I always feel I still feel weird about that.

Because people they talk to you different when you you're a pastor.

Like I'll be at other places, not here.

I actually go other places, and um and you know, guys will especially be like, What do you do?

And I'm like, I'm a pastor.

And they'll be like, they'll change, they'll be like, Oh.

Sometimes they'll start to confess things to me, and they don't need to.

I'm not really like, I'm just at the grocery store, they're like, Man, I've okay, well, I haven't been doing well in this part of life, and I'm like, okay, cool.

Let's do this, you know?

It's fine.

I love it.

I love people.

But uh, but you know, I'm getting old enough now that back in the day when people found out I was the pastor, they'd be like the main one, you know?

And now they kind of look at me and I'm like, yeah, I don't really know what I'm doing, but it's all good.

It's all good.

One day though, soon, like I got enough gray hair and it's coming in fast, you guys, fast.

Like uh, it'll just be normal.

It's great.

But when I first became the lead pastor, there were some pretty major things that I was I was burdened by.

One of those, if you've been at his hands for long, was our roof.

You guys remember all the buckets we used to have to put out every time it rained?

You remember that those days?

Those days were awesome.

Um, we we had a roof that leaked like crazy.

I mean, every time it rained, there would just be leaks galore.

It was the old Kmart roof and it hadn't been replaced.

And the replacing the roof was more money than we had in our church bank account by like by a mile.

And so I I take over the lead role, and that means I have responsibility for stuff here, and I'm like, okay, well, I can kind of that makes sense to me, that makes sense, and then the roof.

How in the world are we gonna take care of that?

And and I was I was walking through the building one day, and it had rained and just leaks, leaks, leaks, and it was just it was awful.

And I was like, what are we gonna do?

And that that thing that Guy had said about you know, God owing American Express$5,000, that came to my mind.

And it's like it hit me.

Oh yeah, this belongs to the Lord.

And I was like, God, I hate to tell you, you need a new roof, you know.

Like, you're gonna have to do this.

I can't afford it.

Like you're gonna have to make something happen.

You know what he did?

He did.

He took care of that for us about two years ago.

It was amazing.

And so, and he used a lot of you to do it, which is even cooler.

We have to have that kind of mentality.

We have to commit to God, not dig down deep and do better.

That's not what I'm saying.

Not not do more, not really prove to God that you're serious.

No, it's the opposite.

It's like God, you do it.

I can't do it.

You do it.

I give it to you.

I give it to you.

That's a commitment.

He's asking you.

Asking you to give him your words.

So worship team if you wouldn't mind making your way back out.

I want to bring up the the picture again of uh of me and Liam, if that's okay, when he was three.

Uh with him on my shoulders.

There we go.

Wow, we're just we're experimenting.

I love it.

Um, you know, it's so funny.

I I was so happy, honestly.

I might joke about it, like oh I had to go uphill.

Um, I was so happy to carry my child.

He wasn't a burden at all.

Do you believe personally that God enjoys carrying you?

Like, do you believe that when you have struggles and problems, that that's the dynamic?

That it's not God going again, this again, seriously?

Fine, come here.

But God's like, nah, I got it.

Hop up here.

I got you.

Like, I'm I'm I'm not the best dad in the world.

But I'm I'm a pretty good dad.

I'm alright.

Like, I got four kids, one of them's gonna need therapy for sure.

Um, I tell Liam all the time, dude, you're the first one.

I don't know.

I'm like the other kids are gonna be so much better off because I'm learning on you, and so you just gotta be patient.

But I I love my kids.

I'm a pretty good dad.

I'm not a better dad than God.

I'm not a better father than God the Father.

So if I enjoy lifting my children up and carrying them when they're tired, when they need to have some rest, how much more is God excited to do that for me?

If I'm filled with joy at the prospect of taking care of a problem for one of my children, then how much more is God the Father excited about the prospect of taking care of a problem for you?

It's just it's about commitment.

Will you commit to God today?

Will you roll away your cares and your worries?

Will you say, hey God, think fast.

You got a problem to solve.

I can't.

I want to give us just a few minutes.

We're gonna wrap up.

Um, I want to give us three minutes to have some time of prayer together right now.

You know, sometimes uh I'll be up here and I'll say, hey, this week, make sure that you do X, Y, or Z.

Like do that.

And then other times I'll be like, why don't we just do it now?

Because we have this opportunity, we're here.

Those of you online, you're watching.

So lean into this.

I want to take just a few minutes.

And uh, and guys, if if I know the lights have been doing weird stuff today, so if this doesn't work, it's all good.

Don't worry about it.

But uh, but oh, okay, you're ahead of me.

That's good.

We're good.

Um, I want to bring the lights down a little bit and give us just a few minutes to pray.

And specifically, here's here's the thought.

What is one burden that you walked in here with today?

Maybe you didn't even realize you had it.

What is one burden that you need to commit to God right now?

Give it to him, roll it away, let him know it's his, and understand that he's like, I've been asking for it for a long time.

I'm excited about this.

So let's spend a few minutes and let's let's do that together.

Just one person.

And by the way, if you've brought him five, that's fine.

There's no limit to what you can give to God.

There's no limit.

Thank you for being capable of handling the weight when we're not.

We love you so much.

Thank you, Jesus, for being gracious with us.

We mess up, we do the wrong thing, we say the wrong thing.

And we oftentimes find ourselves carrying burdens, Lord, as a result of things that are either out of our control or just beyond our scope.

Nothing is out of your control, nothing is beyond your scope, nothing, nothing at all.

So, Jesus, Jesus, thank you for bearing the weight.

Thank you for bearing the weight of our sin.

Thank you for bearing the weight of the brokenness of our world, or we ask that you bring healing where there's brokenness.

In our hearts, in our community right now, so many people are hurting and struggling, Father.

And I pray, Lord, that every burden that was brought to you this morning would be left here.

That we would take that seriously, Lord.

And I pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.