In Touch Ministries

Dr. Charles Stanley: Jesus Christ is not in the business of condemning. He said, "I didn't come into the world to condemn the world, but through him, that the world might be saved." God loves you and Jesus Christ's very life is an expression of the love of God. His death is the greatest expression of the love of God ever demonstrated by God to mankind. He wants to take your load, but you've got to be willing to surrender it to him. He's in the business of remaking people.

Guest (Male): In the 11th chapter of Matthew, Jesus says, "Come to me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Today's edition of In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, highlights this offer. So if you need rest, just go to Christ and let him lift the burden from your shoulders. Here's part two of letting God handle your burdens.

Dr. Charles Stanley: What would you say is the most difficult and most destructive burden to bear? Well, you may have an opinion, you’d say the loss of a loved one or something like that. No, the most destructive burden to bear is the burden of guilt. Guilt over the past, guilt over something in your life that you think you can't handle, or guilt over something you think will never change and that you can't ever do anything about it.

What we need to ask is this: how are we to handle the burdens of our life? 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. 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, "Wait a minute, I don't see any answer to that." It's here. Just listen carefully. He says first of all, "Come to me." Well, coming to him doesn't necessarily remove the burden or alleviate it, because you know what we do oftentimes? Here's what we do. We'll come to him with the burden and we say, "I'm just going to turn it over to him." What we do, we don't turn it over to him, we just discuss it with him. "God, let me tell you about this. Here's what I feel. I think if you would do thus and so. Here's what you promised in your Word, that you supply all of my needs according to your riches and glory. I'm bringing this to you. Thank you very much."

Walk away and what? I'm heavier than I was before because I've been in this big discussion with God and what did I do? I just discussed it, I didn't deal with it. Discussion is not the issue. So first of all, he says, "Come to me," and then look what he says do. He says, "I have some instructions for you." Now, listen to these instructions because I'm not just telling you something that I think, I'm telling you something that I know by experience, over and over and over again, in many facets of all the years that I've lived. I know that it works. He has never failed to keep his promise.

So look at his instruction now. Look at these verses. Here's what he says. First of all, "Come to me, all you who labor, heavy-laden and weary and tired and worn." He says, "I'll give you rest." Now, having come to him, I have two other requests. Listen. "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. I'm gentle and humble in heart. You will find rest for your souls." Now, two things have to deal with. If you want God, listen carefully, if you want God to deal with your burden and lift it off of you, you say, "But you just don't know how bad this burden is." It doesn't make any difference what it is. There are no exceptions in this passage. He didn't say, "Come and I'll do thus, except."

Here's what he said: "Come to me," and notice what he said. I want you to read it, because if you don't read this, mark it in your Bible. There are two things here that we just sort of read over because we don't think about what they mean. Look what he says. First of all, verse 29, "Take my yoke upon you." Now, what in the world does that mean? Well, you've seen pictures of the oxen with that wooden yoke across them and holding them yoked together so they walk together, they pull together, everything's together. Or you've seen these yokes that they place on a person so they can carry weight in the equal weight on both sides. But the whole idea of the yoke is submission.

Now, watch this because you're prone to turn it off right here. He says, "Take my yoke upon you." But listen to what he says: "My yoke is easy." A yoke, if you'll think about what that would do to your neck and your shoulders, before long it would be red and be blistered. Next thing you know, you couldn't even do that. Here's what he says: "My yoke is easy." Why? Because it never touches you. But on the other hand, here's what he's saying. You want me to bear your burden and to take your burden? Surrender your will to me.

Get under the yoke. When you get under the yoke, here's what he says: "You get under the yoke with me, I'll take all the weight off." Now, listen to something I'm going to say very carefully. Jesus Christ is not a place we dump our burdens. He's not a dump. He's not a dump. Many people have the idea, "I'll just go to Jesus and say, 'Lord, here's my burden and I'm asking you to take it away and I'm going to fast and pray and do all of these things you'll take it away.'" He's not going to do that.

We don't dump it on him. Here's what we do. We surrender ourselves to him. What do we do? We get under this yoke of surrender and submission to him. He takes the weight and what do we do? We begin to walk in concert with him. We begin to think the way he thinks. We begin to look at things from his perspective. It is not a matter of dumping it on him, it is a matter of coming into relationship with him. And the relationship is submission to his will, so that if this burden in your life is something that does not belong there, he will take it away and give you a sense of peace and confidence.

If it is a burden that he has allowed for specific reason that he knows is for our good, he will leave it there, but he'll do the same thing: he takes the weight away. So therefore, you and I can live in any circumstance and situation in life with the sense of confidence that my Lord Jesus Christ, who went to the cross and died for my sins, is living his life in and through me, which is what he said he would do. Now, he has the burden that he's allowed there, but he's lifted it. So I don't have to feel the weight of it.

He says, "Surrender, take my yoke upon you." And if you'll notice how lovingly he says these things. "Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I'm gentle, humble in heart. You'll find rest for your souls." Here's what he says. You're in turmoil, in battle in your heart, civil war going on all the time. He says if you will surrender your life to me and surrender your burden to me, I'll take away that anxiety, fretting, fuming, worrying, and you'll find rest for your soul. There are multitudes and multitudes of people who live in a civil war.

Things in their life going on that they know are not right. The burden of sin, the burden of lost communication, the burden of financial things, they've gotten themselves into all kinds of burden. If they were to stop and list them, they’d have a nervous breakdown sitting right there. So God says, "I want to relieve you of the burden. I want to relieve you of the burden." He will either take it away when you surrender your life to him or, if it's something he's going to use for guidance and direction to fulfill his purpose for your life, you have the same result: you don't feel it.

When he takes it away, you don't feel it. When he leaves it there but takes the weight away, you still don't feel it. God will equip you to face any circumstance of life, but it begins with surrender, not dumping. Why do you keep saying that? Because that's what people do. "I'm just going to turn it over to you." No, I'm to get under the yoke with him. So that's the first word of instruction: surrender. I'm surrendering my burden and my life.

The second thing you'll notice he says is, "learn from me." What does that mean? The surrender is an act, a one-time act. I may have to do it many times, but it's an act. "Learn" is a process. I have to learn from him. If I want God to lift my burden and enable me to live with peace in my mind, I've got to begin to learn who he is. He says, "Learn of me." What am I to learn about him? I'm to learn about who he is. I'm to learn about his love. I'm to learn about his forgiveness. I'm to learn about his chastisement and realize that's not a lack of love, but motivation on his part to get us in the right path doing his will.

He says I am to learn of him, and notice what he says: "I'm humble of heart, I'm gentle in spirit." If you could just get this: Jesus Christ is not in the business of condemning. He said, "I didn't come into the world to condemn the world, but through him, that the world might be saved." God loves you and Jesus Christ's very life is an expression of the awesome love of God. His death is the greatest expression of the love of God ever demonstrated by God to mankind. He wants to take your load, but you've got to be willing to surrender it to him.

It's the surrender. That's the big stumbling block: surrender. You mean to tell me that I'm just to say to him, "Lord, here's what I'm going through, I don't know how to deal with it, I don't know what to do about it, there's so much in my past"? What is he wanting you to do? He wants you to come to him in prayer and lay it all out. He knows every bad thing you've ever done, every bad thing you've ever thought, every bad thing you've ever thought about doing, he knows all about that.

You know what he says? "I'm willing to forgive you. I'm willing to cleanse you. I'm willing to give you a new beginning." He's in the business of remaking people. He's in the business of absolutely transforming a person's life, not destroying them. He wants to take your burden. Are you willing to give it to him? Listen, he doesn't take your burden without taking you. He doesn't. He says, "My yoke is easy." Why did he say that? Because he wants us to get under the yoke, and what does that mean? That we surrender ourselves to him, come under his rulership and guidance in our life. And what happens? He just takes that load right off of us. Could it still be there? Yes. Is the weight there? No.

So what is he saying? He says, "Come to me, learn from me." Now, there are a couple of things implied here. We're talking about submitting everything to him, but think about what has to happen as a result of that. If I'm to come to him and submit myself to him and learn from him, it means I also must trust him. You know why people won't come to him? They don't trust him. You see, if I come to him with my burden, let's say it's something that's just terrible in the past. You say, "How can I trust God for that?" Why not?

Have you ever come to him and God said, "Mmm-mmm, not forgiving you for that"? No, he's never said that. He wants you to come. He desires for you to come. He longs for you to come. He loves for you to come to him with that burden. But I can tell you, he's not going to take the burden without taking you. So therefore, your spirit, soul, mind, and body, you must surrender your life to him. And then you have to trust him. If you don't trust him, you won't do it.

Somebody says, "If I surrender my whole life to him and put my trust in him, then he could call me to be a missionary, or he could call me to be a pastor." I don't know why people think of bad things when they think about that. He may take my child. That's the devil. I may lose my husband. In other words, we think of all these things. What kind of God is that? You've got a God that this Bible knows nothing about. This is a God of love. The very presence of Jesus is an expression of the awesome love of God, that he’d send his only begotten Son into the world to die on a cross for a bunch of sinners like us, and you question whether he loves you or not? Yes, he loves you.

Trust him. Listen to this verse I gave you a while ago, I said it's my favorite key verse. Whenever I have a question, I always go to this one: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart. Lean not to your own understanding." Just trust him. "In all your ways acknowledge him," yield to him, obey him, surrender to him. He'll direct your path. He'll show you exactly what to do. Proverbs 3:5 and 6. If you believe that, what will you do? You will come to him, surrender your life to him, lay the burden down before him. Listen, and then anticipate and expect and watch and observe how he deals in your life and the fact that the weight is gone.

When he takes the burden away—and I've heard wonderful testimonies through the years and a lot of people who’ve gotten saved and maybe they lived a pretty raunchy life and as one of my friends calls it, "living in the brier patch." They get saved. One of the first things they talk about is how—it just makes me want to cry—how they feel. What do they feel? The weight's gone. The guilt's gone. All the past is gone. Now they have a brand new beginning.

But there's one other thing that's required of us that's implied here, and that is we must leave it with him. How do I know that I can leave it with him? Because of who he is, because of what he said, what he's promised, and because he has the power to handle it. That's how I know I can leave it. But here's what we do. We bring it to him and some of you’ll go home today maybe and you'll get on your knees and you'll cry to God and you'll tell him, "Lord, today I heard the message and today I'm just going to lay it down before you God. I want to thank you in Jesus' name, you're going to take this off of me. Lord, you know how bad I've been, you know the things—some of this my fault, some of it's not God, I'm just going to leave it with you. Amen, in Jesus' name. Hallelujah. Gosh, I hope God heard what I had to say. I trust he did."

So here's what I want you to realize. It's not a time of discussion, it's a time of surrender and trust and laying it down. No matter what your burden, no matter how long it's been there. You say, "Man, I've been living with this for years." You can get rid of it today. It may be that he'll—when I think about people, for example, who have theological problems. They've grown up believing you can lose your salvation, sin will cause you to lose your salvation. That's living with this awful burden of uncertainty: "If I die today, I may go to hell."

So what happens? When a person suddenly realizes they're eternally secure, goodness, they begin to want to shout and praise God and want to just sail out across the auditorium. Why? For the first time in their life, free of the burden of fear of dying without Christ. Then of course, there are people who've believed other things the Bible teaches and believed them wrongly, who've said, "Thank God, praise the Lord, thank God I've been burdened with this for years and years. You mean God can still use me? Yes. After what I've done? Yes." And they get free.

So ask yourself this question: What is the thing in my life that is burdening me? How do I deal with it? Same way. I come to him. I lay it all out. I surrender it to him. I trust him. Lay it before him. Now think about this: you don't have to beg and plead and sacrifice and fast and pray and make God a bunch of promises. There's not anything in here about this. "Come to me, take my yoke upon you," submit yourself to me. "Learn from me, begin to walk in my ways," is what he's saying. "I'm gentle and humble in heart. And you'll find rest for your souls, for my yoke's easy, my burden's light."

You know what he's saying? Why carry something so heavy when my way is light? Why deal with things that are so difficult when my way is easy? You know, when I think about things that people are dealing with, I just want to weep sometimes. I think, oh God, if they just knew the truth. That's my challenge to you, to believe the simple truth of the Word of God. Now you have to make a choice. Will I believe what he said and give him this burden, remember, along with yourself, or I'll keep bearing it and one of these days hope I'll die before long because I can't handle it too much longer?

And when somebody says to you, "I don't think I can stand this much longer. I've had all I can handle. I can't take it, this is it," here's what I know: they've just confessed that they're bearing a burden God never intended for them to bear. My prayer is, if you have never been saved, you've never trusted Jesus, you have a reason to feel the burden. That burden can be removed right now. The moment you say to him, "Lord Jesus, I'm trusting you as my personal Savior. I've sinned against you. I believe that your death at the cross paid my sin debt in full. I don't feel it, I don't understand it all, but I'm trusting you that's what your Word says and I'm going to take it for what it says. I'm asking you to save me from my sins now. In Jesus' name, amen."

What happened? All that sin debt suddenly disappeared. You're saved by the grace of God. If you're a believer and you're carrying it, you don't have to feel the weight of it. It may be that he'll take it away completely, but if he doesn't, here's what'll happen: he'll make it possible for you to sing at the top of your voice, smile sincerely, and rejoice in the Lord while you're living right in the middle of it. Because he said he took the weight and it's easy living compared to the life you live without Christ.

Guest (Male): You're listening to In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. God will lift the weight of your troubles if you rely on him. When you give up control to the Holy Spirit, you'll experience God's peace and joy even in the most difficult circumstances. To listen again, click on "Today on Radio" at intouch.org and look around for more encouragement to live a life of faith in Christ. Open our online bookstore if you'd like to order a copy of today's complete message. We've called it "Letting God Handle Your Burdens," or order our teaching set, "How to Release Your Burdens." Again, you'll find these resources at intouch.org. To call or text us, the number is 1-800-IN-TOUCH. Or you can write to us at In Touch, Post Office Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357.

Have you noticed a disconnect between what you say you believe and how you actually live? Today's "Moment with Charles Stanley" is coming up.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Let your time and your schedule and everything about you revolve around this: that you and I are to develop and continue to develop this ongoing, intimate, wonderful, exciting, satisfying, indescribable, wonderful, incomparable relationship with a personal God.

Guest (Male): Dr. Stanley devoted his entire life to helping us get closer to Jesus, as we all want to do. You can learn how at charlesstanleyinstitute.org.

We're not the first to seek a life of purpose. The Bible tells of many who followed a specific path, step by step, with courage, with surrender, for a deeper purpose, a stronger passion, a lasting peace. Introducing Your Path to Purpose, Passion, and Peace, a new 90-day devotional inspired by the timeless teaching of Dr. Charles Stanley. Available now at intouch.org/store.

You're listening to In Touch. A Christian's faith should be evident in his or her lifestyle. Here's a moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: If someone ever said to you, "I'll bet you're a Christian," if they said that to you, you should feel good because what it says is, without you saying anything and without you doing anything necessarily, they were able to detect within you a difference from what they detect from other people. You see, the truth is, if you and I are believers—and I'm not saying that anybody should just be able to walk up to everybody and say, "I'm sure you're a Christian," but—Jesus says the eye is the light of the body. That is, if you want to see what's on the inside, look in someone's eyes. They can't hide it.

Because you and I bear the image of Jesus Christ himself, you and I should so live our lives that it would be very evident and easy at least to another Christian to be able to detect that we are not like the world. Our character's not that of the world, our conversation's not that of the world, our conduct is not that of the world. Why? Because we not only bear the image of the heavenly, that is of Christ, God is in this very moment in the process of making us like him.

Guest (Male): You can learn more about the changes Christ can make in your life at intouch.org. How were you encouraged by today's message? Let us know about it. Tomorrow on In Touch, do you know someone who's trapped in sin and you feel inadequate to help them? Well, there is something that you can do. You'll find out about that when our series continues on "How to Release Your Burdens" next time on In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on the station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.