Praying to Relieve Our Burdens

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Well, before we begin this morning, given the subject matter, I want to make it clear that I did not pick this topic or this text last night. I started outlining this series of lessons that we’ve been doing on prayer back in the middle of the summer and started working on this message even back then. And it’s just interesting how God’s providence works and He knows exactly what we need from His Word exactly when we’re going to need it.

We’re going to be in Psalm chapter 116 this morning, but I was thinking about a verse in Matthew chapter 6. Go ahead and turn to Psalm 116. In the Sermon on the Mount, though, in Matthew chapter 6, Jesus told his disciples, Take therefore no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Now, that really is a verse about worry, but it also tells me that each day brings enough trouble for that day. It brings enough worry for that day.

It reminds me of the cartoon I saw a while back that somebody had made where the woman says, I try to take one day at a time, but here lately they all gang up on me at once. If we think that we’re going to go through this life and not ever have trouble or not ever have worry, not ever have any kind of burdens of any kind, then we’re sadly mistaken. And oftentimes, and I’ve said this before, we’ve done people a great disservice when we’ve told them or when we’ve led them to believe that if they simply would come to Christ, if they simply would express faith in Him, if they simply would become Christians, then life would be perfect.

Any of you have a perfect life? I’m not talking about sinless, I’m talking about no problems. In either sense of the word perfect, we don’t have a perfect life. As a matter of fact, I think sometimes our troubles begin when we come to Christ. I don’t have a verse offhand to back it up, but I really believe that the devil then tries to attack us when we try to do something for the Lord.

But this morning, we’re going to talk about praying to relieve those burdens that we have as a result of the trouble that life throws at us. We all have burdens. We all have trouble.

And as we’ve talked about the various reasons why we pray, and we’ve talked about praying to give thanks, and we’ve talked about praying to honor God, and we’ve talked about praying to make our requests, Today we come around to another of the ten reasons. And if you’re just with us today, if you’re just starting in this series with us today, in the middle of a series on prayer and how to pray, we’re in the middle of a ten-part mini-series on ten reasons why we pray. But I’m not going to give all ten of them to you this morning, so don’t worry about that.

We’re just looking this morning at one of the reasons, which is praying to relieve our burdens. And sometimes we have a fear that, well, I shouldn’t really spend time praying about this. this worry that I have, this burden, this concern that I have, because, you know, it’s selfish just to pray for myself.

And sometimes we can go too far one way or the other in our prayers. Folks, we need to stop acting as though the only reason to pray to God is to get something. We need to quit looking at prayer as just the opportunity to go to God and get our grocery list filled.

But at the same time, we do ourselves a disservice, and I think we fail to honor God if we fail to ask Him for the things we really need. It’s not for no reason that God told us to ask and we would receive. And I also want to caution you because I know some of you have not been here before.

I’m not teaching either and will not teach that just because you pray for something, it’s magically going to happen. That if you just believe enough, then God will do whatever you ask. God is not a genie that grants wishes.

But folks, if we pray things in God’s will, that’s the key. If we pray things in God’s will, then he delights to hear and he delights to answer. And sometimes when we pray, God’s will is to change our heart about the situation.

And I can attest to you, God will not always do what you ask, but sometimes He will address the condition of your heart in response to it. And we looked this morning at Psalm 116 and an example from David about praying to relieve our burdens. It says, starting in verse 1, I love the Lord because He hath heard my voice and my supplications.

Now, I know that’s not the only reason why David loved the Lord, but that’s a pretty good one. You know, we love God because He first loved us. God loved us just because that’s His nature.

But we, being the sinful creatures that we are, we needed a little coaxing in order to love Him the way we ought to. And God has provided so many blessings and benefits to His people. And one thing that we have that we don’t deserve that God gives just because He’s good is that He listens to us and hears the voice of our supplications.

When we come to God and bring our petitions and our requests to Him, When we cry out to God in prayer, He hears us. Folks, He’s under no obligation to listen to us. I’ve told you, you’re probably tired of hearing this.

I’ve told you so many times that God is not obligated to us for anything. Because of our sin, because of our rebellion against God as a human race, if He had simply, when Adam and Eve fell in the garden when they sinned, if God had simply turned His back on them and said, I’m through with you, you can spend eternity in hell for all I care, God would have been completely justified, and nobody could have said God had been unfair, because it would have been just to give us what we deserve. And there’s not a bit of good.

I read through the Bible, and I don’t believe I’m exaggerating when I say there’s not a bit of good that we earn or deserve from God. But God gives good things, and God gives blessings, and God even made a way of salvation because of His goodness and because of His mercy. And folks, the fact that we can pray to God and that He hears us, we shouldn’t just take that for granted because it’s not something we’re owed or that we’ve earned.

It’s something that God does because He is loving and He is a caring Father. And so no wonder David says, I love the Lord because He hath heard my voice and my supplications, because He’s inclined His ear unto me. Now the image there is of God actually leaning over to listen.

I don’t think God has to lean to listen. God can hear all of us from where He is, from where we are. And yet for God’s ear to be inclined to us means that God is alert and ready to hear.

We don’t have to wake God up. We don’t have to get His attention. He’s there and ready to listen to His children.

Therefore, He says, I will call upon Him as long as I live. And how many days we go through prayerlessly when God sits there inclined to listen to His children. And we have the awesome privilege of being able to call on the God of the universe and we don’t use it.

But David understood the magnitude of this opportunity we had and said, because of this I will call on him as long as I live. There’s no point. There’s no reason to go through life prayerlessly when we serve a God who’s ready to hear.

In verse 3 he says, The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell got hold upon me, and I found trouble and sorrow. Now we don’t know specifically what period of David’s life he was writing this in. We don’t know if he’s talking about the trouble early in his life with Saul or with Goliath or later on the trouble he caused with Bathsheba or his own son trying to kill him.

Folks, we don’t know what period of trouble this represents in David’s life, but we can look at David’s life through the scriptures and we can see that if anybody had times of trouble and sorrow, David certainly was among them. He had high points, but he also had a lot of low points in his life. And this could speak to any one of David’s situations.

It could speak to all of David’s situations. And you know what? It could speak to any of our situations as well.

There are times when the troubles of this life, the burdens that we bear, feel like the sorrows of death have surrounded us, that we’re just encircled by hopelessness. It says, the pains of hell got hold upon me, found me. I read somewhere that the literal Hebrew rendering of that phrase, got hold of me, is found me.

That sometimes there’s not a hole deep enough for us to hide from the trouble we’re in. Our trouble, unfortunately, can always find us. If you don’t believe that, I mean, not that I’ve tried this, but try not paying your taxes for a few years and changing your address.

The IRS will still find you. I can just about promise you. Sometimes we get in trouble and not necessarily of our own making.

We get in such trouble that there’s not a hole deep enough that we can’t be found. He said, I found trouble and sorrow. Everywhere David turned at times, there was trouble and sorrow.

In our own lives, sometimes everywhere we turn, there’s trouble and sorrow. And sometimes we find so much trouble and sorrow that it really doesn’t feel like I found trouble and sorrow. It feels like they found me.

Have you ever been there? David’s not describing anything that’s not common to every one of us in the human race. But then in verse 4, he says, Then called I upon the name of the Lord.

That’s when everything started to change. That word then, you see a shift in the whole matter. Then called I upon the name of the Lord.

O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul. He said he cried out to God and said, God, I beg you. I love that word beseech.

We don’t use that so much anymore. Maybe we should. We’ll try to bring it back.

I beseech you to stay for lunch today. It means begging, but with a little more oomph to it. He basically says, I beg you, God.

With everything within me, I pour out and I beg you. He says, deliver my soul. Free me from this trouble.

Rescue me from this trouble that I’m in. And he says in verse 5, Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yea, our God is merciful.

Folks, our God is a righteous God. No amens on that? I didn’t say it.

David said it. Our God is a righteous God. There is not a bit of sin.

There’s not a bit of imperfection. There’s not a bit of unholiness. There’s not a bit of deceit or unwickedness in him.

He is perfectly holy and just in a way that I think we really can’t understand. I have an idea of what it means for him to be that holy, but as a fallen sinful creature, I’m so wicked I can’t completely understand what it means for God to be that holy. Folks, God is righteous without modifiers.

God is righteous, period. He’s holy. And God will always, always, always, always, because of his righteousness, God will always, if I didn’t say always enough times already, God will always do the right thing.

Now it may feel from our limited perspective like he, God, you made the wrong choice here, but we know better than that. God always does the right thing in the long run that is going to bring us the greatest good, again in the long run, and him the most glory. And that doesn’t mean that things always work out the way we want them to here on earth, but God is working from an eternal perspective.

And he sees the long view of history, and God will always do what’s right and do what’s best. He says that God is gracious. God’s grace means that He so often gives us things that we do not deserve. Salvation was a free gift to me that I didn’t earn or deserve that was purchased by Jesus Christ dying on the cross.

God didn’t have to give that to me. God didn’t have to send His Son to die for me, and yet He did. That was an example of God’s grace.

He gave me salvation, eternal life, peace with Him, and a home in heaven that I did not deserve and still don’t deserve. God is gracious, and He says, yea, God is merciful. Mercy is the other side of the coin from grace.

Where grace says God gives us what we don’t deserve, mercy says God doesn’t give us what we do deserve. Because instead of salvation, instead of heaven, what I deserved because of my sin and what we all deserve because of our sin is eternity separated from God in the fires of hell. And yet for Christ’s sake, because of what Christ did, God does not give me what I deserve.

God is merciful. And he says in verse 6, the Lord preserveth the simple. Well, I’m so glad for that.

If you’re not familiar with the older meaning of the word simple, it means kind of slow. Don’t really understand everything that’s going on. And I don’t care how much common sense we have.

I don’t care how much book learning we have. Sometimes we’re simple. Sometimes we really just don’t get it.

And especially in contrast to a God who knows all, sees all of history as though it’s just a blip on the radar screen. folks in contrast to him I’m simple-minded and yet God preserves the simple. I’ve heard an old saying some of some of you may have told me the saying that God looks out for children and fools.

I’m so glad because who among us doesn’t fall into well we all fall into that first category and I’m pretty sure we all fall into that second category at some point in our lives. I know I do. But God preserves the simple.

Folks, even when I can’t see how deep the trouble is that I’m in, even when I don’t understand the gravity of the situation, even when I’m not smart enough to see a way out, even when I’m not smart enough to see that there’s hope in God, folks, he preserves the simple. And he upholds us in spite of ourselves. He says, I was brought low and he helped me.

As I shared with you a couple Wednesday nights ago, The world we live in, everybody wants to be your friend when you’re on top of the world. Everybody wants to be your friend when you’re rolling in money and when you’re prestigious. If you go on the internet, look at how many people follow celebrities on Twitter.

They just want to be friends with that famous person. Folks, everybody wants to be with you and be your friend when you’re on top of the world. But the Bible teaches that we have a God who hears us in our lowest state, who when we are low, helps us.

Folks, we serve a God who’s not a respecter of persons. He’s not impressed by our wealth, by our prestige, by our success. What God looks on is the heart.

And when he sees that his people are brought low, God may be at times the only one who cares. But it’s hard to say, well, it’s only God who cares when it’s God. We serve a God who cares about us even when we’re brought low.

And because of all this, he spends two verses here describing God and his care. And so in verse 7, he turns and speaks to himself and says, Because of this, return to thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. Return to thy rest because of the kind of God we serve, who not only is so mighty and so powerful and so all-knowing and so righteous and so gracious and merciful and all these other attributes, but also cares about us in our lowest state.

He turns and says to himself, in spite of the trouble he’s in and been in, Return to your rest and sleep easily at night, knowing that God watches over his people. Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. God has blessed, he speaks of himself here, God has blessed David beyond what he could have imagined, beyond what he had earned or deserved.

And even in the midst of his trouble, God had comforted David and cared for him and lifted him up out of it. And with a God like that, what do we have to be afraid of, really? Now I say that admitting to you, if you’re sitting there saying, you don’t know what I’m dealing with.

Folks, I have the same fears you all have. I have the same moments where my faith wavers, and I think this is really scary where I’m headed. But folks, really, really, what have we to fear with a God like that?

Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. And in verse 7 here at the end, it raises an important point that I’ve made before, but I think bears repeating. We so often get into trouble and we get into difficulty and sticky situations and we want to complain and say, God, how can you let this happen to me?

God, why would you do this to me? God, it’s not fair that this is going on. Well, if we take the view of who God is and who we are in contrast and what we deserve, we don’t deserve any of the good stuff.

And instead of complaining that God hasn’t given me exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it, and the way I wanted it, and complaining about how deprived I am, how mistreated I am, folks, a much better perspective is to look at what God has blessed us with and to be thankful because God has dealt with us bountifully. And I can say that confidently no matter what situation you’re going through today. Some of you may be dealing with family issues.

Some of you may be dealing with financial issues. And some of you may be dealing with things I can’t even imagine right now and thinking, God, it’s not fair that I’m having to go through this. It’s not fair.

God, how could you let this happen to me? I haven’t done anything wrong. But I’m here to tell you, we are a blessed people.

You’ve got breath in your lungs right now. Your heart is beating right now, and I know that for a fact because you’re sitting upright and looking at me. God has blessed you with that.

And we can worry and complain about our finances, and God, why is this happening and why is that? The poorest people in this country are richer than some of the richest people in some other countries. Even the poorest people here most of the time have a refrigerator, have a car, have a phone, have food to eat.

Folks, I don’t tell you that to make you feel bad about what you have, but I tell you that to remind you that there’s not one person in this room who cannot say that God has dealt with us bountifully. God has blessed us, quite frankly, beyond what we deserve. I need to move quickly through these remaining verses.

For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. David looks at God and says look at how you’ve upheld me so many times through his life people wanted to kill him either because they thought he was trying to usurp the throne or because they wanted to usurp his throne and people wanted to kill him and time after time after time after time God protected David from the people who wanted him dead and so David could say that you’ve delivered my soul from death I’m still here folks every one of us can say that this morning because we’re still here. God has delivered our soul from death.

Mine eyes from tears. Folks, there are times when the sorrow will overwhelm you and you’ll think, how am I going to get through it? And yet you pray, you cry out to God, and I don’t understand how He does it.

But in my experience, He can change your heart and He can soften your heart and He can comfort you in ways that you never thought possible. And He can deliver your eyes from tears and your feet from falling. When you think, how am I going to go forward?

How do I move on from what I’m dealing with? This is just going to destroy me. Yet if we pray and we stay in that constant conversation with God, He keeps our feet from falling.

He directs our paths to show us where He wants us to go so that if we’re paying attention and if we’re committed to following what He tells us to do, we don’t lean to the left or to the right, but we keep on following Him and He keeps our feet from falling. He says, I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. Now to hear the kind of sorrow that has gone on in David’s life and the kind of sorrow he describes here, I think that’s an appropriate turn of phrase, the land of the living.

Because sometimes we get in such deep sorrow and despair that we just don’t. . .

How do I describe it? The land of the living would be the opposite of what we’re walking through. And maybe you stay in bed.

Maybe you go home and draw the curtains at night and don’t want to see anybody, don’t want to talk to anybody, and you just feel like this isn’t really life that I’m going through. But folks, God can set us right back up and put us right back in the land of the living. I believed, therefore I have spoken.

He said, I believed that God would care for me. I believed that God would comfort me, therefore I’ve spoken, therefore I’ve said it, therefore I’ve cried out to God and asked Him the things that I’ve asked Him. And it seems a strange place to leave off in verse 11, but he says, I said in my haste, all men are liars.

And my understanding of what he’s referring to there is the thought that sometimes you get in such deep despair that people will try to comfort you even with God’s word and remind you of God’s faithfulness and you think it just can’t be true. But David said, I said in my haste that they were all lying. Folks, when you come to church and you’re going through difficulties, when you turn to Christian friends going through difficulties, and they tell you God is faithful and God will see you through this, they are not lying.

They’re not making it up and they’re not imagining it. And yet sometimes we say in our haste, this is not true. Folks, we see from this passage that we serve a God who can and does relieve our burdens.

Now, again, I want to caution you. That doesn’t mean that he’s immediately always going to take away every situation that we think is bad. Sometimes God’s relief of our burdens is to teach us how to walk through with the burdens.

Sometimes God’s relief of the burden is to walk with us and carry the burden. There’s another verse in Matthew that says, And I thought of that verse several years ago before a mission trip to Mexico. Some friends of mine and I, in college, we were very into making t-shirts for things.

I don’t know, just a weird hobby. And we wanted to make some t-shirts in Spanish with Bible verses as we were going to Mexico. So even as we were walking around, it would be a witness.

And one of the shirts we designed, I think I’ve still got it, but I can’t find it, had a picture of a donkey just loaded down with all the stuff that somebody could have loaded on the poor donkey’s back and had in Spanish that verse underneath it. Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And folks, the fact is sometimes we get in life and we feel like that donkey just loaded down. You know, if the world throws anything else on me, I’m going to snap into.

And yet, Jesus says, my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Folks, he comes alongside us and walks through it with us, and he can relieve our burdens. This morning, four things I want to share with you just in the next couple minutes about this passage and about praying to relieve our burdens.

And I think it’s entirely appropriate, if you haven’t gotten this already, I don’t think it’s selfish at all to cry out to God and say, I can’t carry this myself because we’re told, Come unto me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. First of all, we seek relief from God because trouble is not hard to find. It’s not. Trouble is not hard to find.

Some of you are going to walk out of this building, go home this afternoon, and your phone’s going to ring or something, and there’s going to be trouble. I got home Friday afternoon, and I got my mail, and there was only one thing in the mailbox, which is usually a good sign. There was a bill in there from some collector who’s wanting me to pay them $1,000 for a bill I’ve never even seen and never heard of.

And I thought, what on earth is this? Just going out to the mailbox and there’s trouble. Because I would have paid them if they’d sent me a bill.

But there’s trouble. Folks, we can’t hide from it. We can run from it and never get anywhere.

We can try to handle it ourselves and get crushed underneath its weight, we can cry out to God and seek relief from Him because He’s big enough to handle all the trouble we have. And trouble’s not hard to find. And it tells us that in verse 3 we’ve already looked at, the sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell got hold of me.

I found trouble and sorrow. Folks, it’s not hard to find. If you don’t have trouble today, you will tomorrow.

And if not tomorrow, then the next day, you’re going to have trouble at some point because it just finds us. It just finds us. But one of the best reasons why we pray to God to relieve our burdens is because there’s so many of them.

The trouble is just not hard to find. Second of all, we seek relief from God because we’re incapable of rescuing ourselves. We seek relief from God because we’re incapable of rescuing ourselves.

There are some troubles, folks, that we can deal with. There are some troubles we can take care of. Somebody sends you a bill and you’ve got the money, you can pay it.

Maybe you don’t want to and that’s trouble, but hey, I can deal with it. Or I’ve got to go down to the revenue office and renew my license. That’s a lot of trouble.

But we can go and take care of it and we can deal with that. But folks, there’s a lot of trouble in this world that if we try to take care of it on our own, we’re incapable and we’re just going to wear ourselves out in the process. And I think all of you at some point or another have been in that kind of trouble where you don’t know what to do, don’t know how to try to address it, but to just throw your hands up and say, God, this is yours because I can’t take this.

verse 6 tells us the Lord preserves the simple I was brought low and he helped me folks even when we don’t understand the trouble even when we can’t even when we’re not smart enough to see a way out even when we’re at our lowest point and incapable of dealing with the trouble with the burdens with the sorrow with whatever folks we can cry out to God for relief and I submit to you that we glorify him when we do so in those times in second Corinthians chapter 12 he says and he said unto me Paul saying, Jesus said unto him, and he said unto me, my grace is sufficient for thee. My strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

I submit to you, it brings God a lot more glory when his children are weak and rely on his strength than when we try to rely on our own. If I fix all my problems and I’m a self-made man, then everybody looks at me and says how great I am. By the way, that’s not what happens in real life.

It reminds me of the song my dad used to sing when I was a child. At least once I remember you singing it, The Warrior is a Child. He used to sing it in church, and the chorus says, they don’t know that I go running home when I fall down.

They don’t know who picks me up when no one else is around. I drop my sword and cry for just a while, because deep inside this armor, the warrior is a child. Folks, in our infirmities, like I said, if we are self-made people, the world looks at us and says how great we are, But when we’re weak, when we can’t handle the burdens of life, and God comes along and does something that only God can do, then we and the world around us look and say, how incredible is the God we serve?

How incredible is the God we serve? That’s why at one point in the Old Testament, the Israelites had a massive army, and God said, no, you need to get rid of some of them before you go and do battle. I believe it was Gideon.

And then a second time, God said, no, you need to go get rid of some more of them. And then with just a few hundred, They overran an army of thousands, and everybody said, God did that. God did that.

Folks, when we are weak, he’s strong, just like the children’s song, Jesus Loves Me Says. And it’s in our infirmities, when we can’t handle the burdens and struggles of life, that he comes along and relieves us and carries them with us or for us, that he’s glorified because people look and say, that’s what my God can do. Third of all this morning, we seek relief from God because no problem is too great for him to handle.

It’s too big for me to handle, as we just talked about, if I’m incapable. But there’s no problem that’s too big for God to handle. Don’t need to spend a whole lot of time on that because we all understand that.

I’m sure most of you believe that. But believing it here and knowing it here when we get in the middle of the situation is sometimes a different story. And we need to be reminded, the God of the Bible, the God we serve, there’s nothing too big for him to handle.

It says in verse 8 here that, For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. It didn’t matter what kind of trouble David was in. God handled it, took care of it.

It wasn’t too big for him. And thinking about this point last night, I recalled Paul standing before King Agrippa in Acts chapter 26 and giving an account of his faith and saying to King Agrippa, Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead? Speaking of the resurrection of Christ because the king didn’t believe it.

as so many others didn’t. But if you believe he’s God, why is it so hard to believe that he could raise the dead? I mean, he’s God.

He can do that. And I assume most of you this morning believe that God raised Jesus Christ from the dead. If he can raise the dead, what is too powerful for God?

If he could raise the dead, there’s nothing else that is out of his control. Need I remind you, he’s the one who parted the waters for Moses and the children of Israel. Need I remind you, he’s the God who sent down fire on Mount Carmel to burn up the altar before Elijah to prove that he was the true God.

Need I remind you that he’s the one who sent his son to be born of a virgin, something that scientists still look at and say, how is that possible? He’s God. Remember that principle and you won’t be surprised by what he does.

Well, you might be surprised, but you won’t be shocked. Won’t be scratching your head. Folks, if he can raise the dead, what is there he can’t do?

If he can raise Jesus Christ from the dead, there’s nothing in my world that he can’t handle. He can handle what really amount to my piddly little problems. Folks, there’s nothing too hard for our God. So much that David says again in Psalm chapter 40, Many, O Lord, my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to usward.

They cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered