In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: No matter what you're facing in life, God is ready to enable you to walk with that burden, live with that burden without feeling the weight of it. You say, "Well, does that mean that I won't think about it?" No. But it means that I'm able to live in the midst of it, think about it, even talk about it without bearing the weight of it, because that's what He promised. That's exactly what He will do. And there are many of us who can give testimony. There's nothing that He cannot handle.

Guest (Male): Is stress wearing you out? The good news is you don't have to live under the weight of anxiety. Today on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, we'll hear how to tame the tension. Let Christ replace it with a sense of calm confidence. Stress relief begins with letting God handle your burden.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Why is it that some people go through difficulty, hardship, pain, carry heavy burdens in their life, and somehow they just keep on smiling? Shoulders are up, smile on their face, joy in their heart. Not complaining, not moaning and groaning about the life that they have to live. On the other hand, here's someone who has less challenges in life and it just looks like they can't handle it. They simply say, "I just don't think I can handle much more."

Well, more than likely, they're handling something God never intended for them to handle. Ask yourself the question: when you have burdens that come into your life, how do you handle them? Do you handle them correctly, biblically, according to God's Word? Or do you find yourself just complaining and trying to escape them in some fashion? How are we to handle the burdens of our life?

I want you to turn, if you will, to Matthew chapter 11 and look at three verses here. Here is God's answer, a very crystal clear answer, to how you and I are to handle the burdens in our life. If you'll remember this passage, He's been talking to some folks and telling them about God's judgment, the cities and so forth and what's happening. Then He comes down to verse 28 and here's what He says. 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, "Now wait a minute. I don't see any answer to that." It's here. Just listen carefully.

Now, let's define what we mean by a burden. A burden is a heaviness of the heart, a heaviness of the spirit, a heaviness of the soul. Something that weights you down emotionally or mentally or spiritually. You just know that there's a weight upon you and oftentimes you may have felt those things and thought, "Well, I'm thinking I'm getting sick." Not sickness at all. It may be a burden. It may be for something as a result of something you have done. It may be a burden that God has sent.

But let's distinguish between these burdens. For example, there is a God-given burden. In the Old Testament, the burden, for example, you'll read especially in the King James Version, will say "the burden of the Lord came to Isaiah or Ezekiel or Jeremiah." And what that meant was simply this: this would be a divinely communicated message from God given for the purpose of warning the nation or the people or a person. The burden of the Lord came to Isaiah, Jeremiah, or Ezekiel.

The other word that's used in other translations is "the oracle of the Lord," which is the same thing—a word from God. So often times He would give warnings in the Old Testament concerning the nation or people or families, and it was a word of God. It was a burden. Now what that meant was simply this: that prophet felt the compulsion, the weight, the absolute necessity of delivering that word. He couldn't live without it. He had to deliver the word of God.

And so those burdens often times come into your life and my life for different reasons. But a burden is a heaviness. It's a weight that you and I feel. And when I think about this passage and think about what Jesus said and how He said it, and then I think about how God places burdens upon our heart. Now in the Old Testament, it was a burden for a nation, as we say. Well, you say, "How does God place burdens upon your heart and mine?"

For example, you may feel for some reason unknown to you this very, very strong desire to witness to someone. It's such a heaviness, you can't escape it. You've just got to go say something. Burden from God. He wants to do something in that person's life. Or you may feel a burden to pray for someone. You don't even know all the ideas about what's going on in their life, but you just feel very strongly God wants you to pray for them.

And in fact, it's a heaviness in your heart. Before you go to bed at night, you say, "I've just got to get down here and talk to God about them." Or it may be a burden to give someone something. You want to help them in some fashion. You don't know what they're going through, but God has burdened your heart. It's one of the ways God directs you and me—by a burden. Now most of the time we get burdened about something, we want to sort of eliminate it in some fashion.

Say, "Well, you know, I must just have a little concern" or whatever it might be. No. Oftentimes, God is burdening you, placing this heaviness, this weight upon your soul, your spirit, your mind in order to do something that He wants to accomplish in your life. For example, any man or woman called of God to serve Him—and I let's say, for example, here's a young man called to preach the gospel. How does God usually call people like that?

Well, once in a while it may be some very definite experience like Paul's Damascus Road experience, but most of the time that's not true. Usually, it's a feeling that God places. And then it increases until it's something you can't escape. It's a burden. It's something you—in other words, the pressure is so great, you just know you have to do it. And that's why when a man or a woman runs from God's call in their life, I'm telling you, you're running to a disaster.

Guest (Male): When we allow struggles to overwhelm us, we might feel very alone. But as you heard in Dr. Stanley's message, believers can trust that Jesus is always present. We'll hear more about freely trusting God next time, and you can listen again by clicking on Today On Radio at intouch.org and look around for more encouraging resources. If you'd like to order a copy of today's complete message, open our online bookstore and look for "Letting God Handle Your Burdens." It's also included in our teaching set "How to Release Your Burdens." Again, that's intouch.org.

Dr. Charles Stanley: And I would say to any man of God, whoever he might be: if you're out there preaching and you don't have any burden from God, you're not ready to preach no matter who you are. You may be educated, you may be experienced, but if you just walk out and you just want to tell a few stories and talk about this, you don't have any compulsion, you don't have any drive, you don't have any feeling of absolute necessity to share what's in your heart, there's something wrong, you need to deal with it.

So God lays burdens upon our heart to direct us, to guide us, to lead us, to get our attention, for example. How many people will tell you the story of how God finally got their attention in something that they couldn't handle, they couldn't deal with, and they couldn't escape? So all burdens are not bad. Many of them are very, very good. They're good for us. So if you're facing one of those things and asking God what in the world He's doing in your life, then maybe that's exactly what He's doing.

Now, we said, for example, the burden of guilt is the heaviest. I want you to turn, if you will, to the 38th Psalm for a moment, and I want you to listen to what the Psalmist says in this 38th Psalm, because guilt, for example, the result of sin in a person's life, is extremely, extremely devastating. The 38th Psalm, and look if you will in this fourth verse. I want to give you time to find it. Psalm 38, verse 4. Listen to what the Psalmist says concerning a burden here and how it—we feel.

He says, "For my iniquities," that is my sin, "are gone over my head; as a heavy burden, they weight too much for me." When a person is living with guilt, it is affecting them mentally, fragmenting their thinking. It is affecting them physically. It is affecting them spiritually. It is affecting them physiologically. Listen, you can't live with guilt, the burden of guilt, without it affecting you.

God doesn't want you living with guilt. He's willing to forgive you, willing to cleanse you, willing to give you a new start in life. Guilt is a burden that is the result of sin in a person's life. Now sometimes, rare exception, a person can feel guilty when they're not guilty. They've been taught something erroneously, some theology that is absolutely untrue. So sometimes it's false guilt.

But watch this. It doesn't make any difference whether it's false guilt or true, genuine guilt, the effects are the same. So if there's a sense of guilt in your life, that is a burden. It is a destructive burden. It is a deceptive burden. And it is a burden that can lead to all kinds of other situations and circumstances in your life, affects every part of your life. So burdens are realities. I want us to read this passage again because it's very important we get the tone of what Jesus said as well as the words. Here's what He said.

He said, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, 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. My yoke is easy and my burden is light." You say, "Well, what—how can that help me?" I'm going to show you in a moment. How are we to handle our burdens? And I would simply say, first of all, do exactly what Jesus said. Listen to this.

You say, "But wait, I'm not even a Christian." Then you really need to listen. Because I'm going to tell you something. Where are you going to have your burden either removed or lifted so that you don't have to bear the weight of it? You have no other place to go. For there is no one anywhere who has the wisdom and the power of Almighty God, or the love for you who desires to rescue you from that or enable you to live with it, have to think about it, and at the same time not bear the weight of it. There's only one person who can do that and that is Jesus.

So I want you for your own sake to listen carefully. He says, "Come to me." Not "go somewhere else," "come to me," Jesus said. "Come to me," He said. And what will He do? He says, "Come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden." His invitation is all-inclusive. That means whether you're a believer or whether you're a person who's never believed, Jesus' invitation isn't to just the believers. He says, "Come to me all you who are heavy-laden, burdened down, and I will give you rest."

Now, whether you're an unbeliever or a believer, you and I have an invitation to come to Him for what reason? To deal with, as He says here, to deal with the burdens of our life. And what is the first burden that He wants to deal with? And that's the burden of sin in your life. If you have never trusted Jesus Christ as your personal savior, you have a burden. It's an awesome burden. Listen, it's a burden unless dealt with, will listen, will cause you to lose the privilege of living eternally with Almighty God.

If you die without Christ, you're going to be separated from Him eternally. And so therefore there is a burden, that burden of sin. And here's what He says. "My little children, these things I write to you that you sin not. But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous who's paid our sin debt in full." Which means that if you're not a believer, you can ask Him to forgive you of your sin, surrender your life to Him.

And what happens? He immediately deals with the burden of sin in your life. He paid the penalty. Right now, you've already begun to pay for it. You say, "Well, what do you mean begun to pay for it?" Because when you bear sin in your life, you think you're not paying for it. You have already begun to pay, listen, pay the debt of sin. It's affecting you in ways you don't think it's affecting you because you don't see it, because you may not necessarily feel it, but it's there.

It's like those termites that start. When they start, you don't hear them. But there comes a point at which you can hear something going on. There comes a point at which you can just touch the wall and it just—your finger just goes right through. Living with sin is a horrible burden that has destructive effects in a person's life. So, but look at this invitation. "Come to me all you that labor and heavy-laden and I'll give you rest."

So this invitation is universal. It's offered to every single person. And a second thing I want you to notice about it is, it's motivated by love. That is He's willing to deal with the burdens of our life. Now look at the words He uses here in this passage. He says, "Come to me all who are weary and heavy-laden and I'll give you rest. I'll make it possible for you to live with a peaceful mind and heart no matter what you're facing in life. Take my yoke upon you"—and I'm going to explain that—"learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you'll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Does that sound like somebody who doesn't care? No, it does not. Doesn't that sound like a God full of love? That He loves you and me enough that He doesn't want us living in bondage to anything, living weighed down on the inside, living with the weights and the cares of life, living with things that have happened in the past, past regrets, living with things that others have done to us or whatever it might be. God doesn't want us living like that.

He says, "Come to me all you that are heavy-laden, burdened down with these things, and I'll give you rest." It is an invitation that's motivated by love so that you never have to fear coming to Him. Some people say, "Well, I don't—I'm not a Christian and I don't know what God may do." I can tell you this: whatever He does in your life, you can spell it L-O-V-E, love. That's who He is. That's how He operates. That, listen, that's what motivates us to come to Him. That He loves us no matter who we are.

And He'll, listen, He will deal with these burdens in our life no matter what the burdens may be. For example, turn to the 55th Psalm for a moment, and I want you to note—notice a couple of Psalms here. The 55th Psalm and if you'll notice what He says in this 22nd verse. Listen. He says, "Cast your burden upon the Lord. He'll sustain you." You don't have to live with it. "Cast your burden upon the Lord. He will sustain you, uphold you, provide for you, energize you, encourage you, motivate you, equip you, deal with you in such a way that it is an expression of His love."

Then if you'll look at—look if you will in Psalm 68, and I want you to notice one word especially in this 19th verse. Here's a God who desires to lift the burden. And if you'll notice in this passage, nowhere does He say that He will remove all your burdens. He doesn't promise to remove them. He says what will He do? He will lift it.

Look in this 68th Psalm, 19th verse. "Blessed be the Lord who daily bears our burden." Now listen. If He bears it, I don't have to bear it. Why should I live with bearing these burdens in my life when He says He daily bears our burden? What does it say? He's daily involved in your life. He daily cares for what's going on in your life. He daily understands where you are, knows what's going on.

He has the wisdom and the power to deal with that burden whatever it may be. You don't have to bear it. It may be a financial burden in your life. You say, "Well, is He interested in my finances?" Yes. You say, "Well, I got myself in this mess. Is He still interested in helping me?" Yes. Somebody else did it to me. Yes. In other words, it doesn't make any difference.

Remember: "Come to me all you that are heavy-laden, I'll give you rest. I'll give you the ability to have peace of mind, confidence and trust and a quietness of spirit no matter what you're going through, no matter what you're facing, no matter what the burden may be." There's nothing that He cannot handle. No pressure, no burden so heavy that He can't lift it.

For example, I could lift a thousand pounds on my shoulder if there's always at least an eighth of an inch between my skin and the thousand pounds. I'll never feel it. Right? I'll never feel it. Because you see, something is keeping it off my shoulder. No matter what you're facing in life, God is ready to do what? To enable you to walk with that burden, live with that burden without feeling the weight of it.

You say, "Well, does that mean that I won't think about it?" No. But it means that I'm willing to—listen, I'm able to live in the midst of it, think about it, even talk about it without bearing the weight of it, because that's what He promised. That's exactly what He will do. And there are many of us who can give testimony. Things that are burdens that are there, that we can't remove. We can't remove it.

And the issue is this: not whether to remove it, because you see, God knows that to remove some burdens would be to our disadvantage and to leave some there while He's bearing the total weight of it is an awesome experience because we learn something about Him. And He enables us, and we become a testimony to other people.

So when He—when you look at this passage and He says "come to Him," all of us no matter who we are, He will bear them. Here's an expression of His love. Here's the motivation of His love. And remember what He says, for example, in 1 Peter 5:7. He says, "Cast all your cares upon Him, He'll care for you." That means, in other words, the implication is if I give it to Him, I don't have to bear it.

That is exactly what He wants us to understand. I don't have to bear what I've given to Him. Many people living their lives every day, weighed down with all kinds of burdens. Think about, let's say, for example, here's a mother. Husband walked away. She has three small children to raise. One of them's in the first grade, one of them's in the nursery, and one of them's in the fifth grade. She's got to go to work every morning.

She does her best to get them there on time, then she's got to get to work on time. She's got to dress them, feed them, and so forth. And you know what? That isn't just once in a while. That's daily. I'm so glad he put that verse in there. He bears our burden daily. What that means is He will help me daily, strengthen me daily, undergird me daily, provide for me daily. Daily, daily, daily.

That's the thing that gets the folks. Well, why doesn't God remove this because here's what I have to face every day? Well, He knows exactly how to enable you and me every single day of our life.

Guest (Male): When we allow struggles to overwhelm us, we might feel very alone. But as you heard in Dr. Stanley's message, believers can trust that Jesus is always present. I hope you'll join us next time for part two of "Letting God Handle Your Burdens" on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley.

If you'd like to order a copy of today's complete message, open our online bookstore and look for "Letting God Handle Your Burdens." It's also included in our teaching set "How to Release Your Burdens." Again, that's intouch.org. To call or text, it's 1-800-IN-TOUCH. You can write to us at In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357.

Do you tend to be a little more critical than you should be? Hear about a way to turn that negative attitude into positive praise just ahead in today's Moment with Charles Stanley.

In Touch Plus is streaming on Local Now, featuring all the best of Dr. Charles Stanley. We want you to have strong convictions based on the Word of God. He's working out things that you and I would never know about in our future. In Touch Plus, your streaming network for quality Christian programming 24/7. Now watch this. In Touch Plus, streaming free on Local Now.

The peace of God is tranquility and quietness of the soul. It is the assurance that no matter what's going on around us, everything is secure. Peace is not determined by circumstances, neither is it a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. In a world filled with noise and uncertainty, you can discover peace that cannot be shaken. Get your new free booklet "Peaceful and Still: A Guide to Experiencing God's Rest in an Anxious Age." Visit intouch.org/peaceful.

You're listening to In Touch. Believers have a way to exchange criticism for praise. Here's a Moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Let me ask you a question. Have you ever found anything in Jesus that was not worthy of your praise? My friend, there's one thing about the living savior, the living Lord. He's absolutely perfect. His perfection goes far beyond my ability to conceive how perfect He is. And you'll find no disappointments in Him.

But if my attitude is negative and I have a critical spirit about things and people and places and circumstances and situations, how am I going to be praising the Lord and glorifying Him? I'll tell you what, if you have a critical spirit, just tell God that you're going to lay it down by faith and you want to start praising Him. The next time you feel critical, just start praising the Lord.

Just say, "God, I'm having to learn. And what I'm really feeling, I don't like, but Lord, I choose to get my attention on You and off of this and start praising You." And God will get you out of that trap. You say, "Well, do you mean to tell me that praise will get us over a critical spirit?" Did I not just say that a critical spirit will hinder our praise? Right idea.

But once you understand what's going on and you change your focus to Him, then what happens is you begin to praise Him, and after a while, all the things that seem to be so absolutely horrible in your life, you get a different perspective. You know why? You're seeing it from His perspective. Nothing around you may change. But there is something about praising the Lord that changes our perspective.

Guest (Male): You can learn more about living a lifestyle of praise at intouch.org. Tomorrow on In Touch, you may have many challenges, but you don't have to handle them by yourself. I hope you'll join us next time for part two of "Letting God Handle Your Burdens" on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on this station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.