Praying to Relieve Our Burdens

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Psalm chapter 116 tonight. Psalm chapter 116. You know, burdens really aren’t enjoyable to have to bear, are they?

If they were enjoyable, I think they would have picked a different word besides burden. Burden just doesn’t have a good connotation to it. And even though none of them are especially enjoyable just by the fact of being a burden, there are some that are worse than others, some that are harder to bear than others.

There are some burdens that we just are not meant to carry ourselves. There are some that will crush us under their weight if we’re not careful. The best illustration I can think of this is when I graduated from college and got married all in the same month and moved out, that is still the time my mother refers to as when I ran away from home.

But a very nice lady at Southgate was getting rid of an upright piano, not unlike this one, maybe a little bigger, and offered it to me. I said, sure, I’ll take it. So my grandfather helped me to load up this piano. I forget where we even got it from.

But helped me to load up this piano and took it to the house I was moving into and more, and that thing was heavy. And he said, I will never, he was a very nice man, he was just teasing, but he said, I will never move that piano again. I said, oh, I bet you will.

You know what, that piano, I laughed about that. I laughed at his funeral about that because he passed away about a month before the next time I moved. And you know, I don’t know about y’all.

Sometimes I make jokes because you have to laugh to keep from crying. And I looked at my mom, I said, anything to get out of moving that piano again. And I don’t blame him.

I still have that piano. And the last time I thought, I’m very serious about, I’m very seriously considering just leaving Arkansas because I didn’t want to move that piano again. But I went and tried to move it onto the truck and just tried to get it out of my living room. I nearly broke myself and the floor.

Just tried to load it onto the dolly. And I’m in a position where if I move, it’s going to land on my foot and break every bone in my foot. And if I don’t move, my arms are going to come off.

And so I’m there trying to hold this piano precariously on this dolly and screaming for my dad and one of the deacons from the church who were out there helping me load up boxes. And I thought, okay, I get it. I wasn’t meant to move this by myself, even to lift it up on the dolly.

There are some burdens. As a matter of fact, I may just leave it in the storage when I do buy another house. But there are some burdens we are not meant to carry.

There are some burdens we are not meant to hold on to because we just quite frankly are not strong enough to hold on to these burdens. There are some that are a little smaller, that are a little easier for us to carry. But there are some burdens that we’re just not meant to carry by ourselves and we need help with.

As we’ve been talking the last several Sunday nights about reasons for prayer, we’ve talked about some of the things we would look at and say, well, they’re more spiritual. Things like praising God, giving thanks, confessing our sins. We’ve talked last Sunday night about making our requests known to God. And we tend to think that’s less spiritual, but God tells us to do it.

There’s nothing wrong with taking our legitimate requests to God. Tonight, I want to talk about praying to relieve our burdens. Because we do get to points in life where we think, I just can’t do this anymore.

And David understood that. You know, it’s funny that so many of these messages on the reasons for prayer come from the Psalms. But, you know, David pretty well covered the whole range of human emotions and thoughts and frailty. And so we’re going to look at about 11 verses out of Psalm chapter 116 tonight.

He starts out in verse 1 and says, I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my supplications. You know what? There are a lot of reasons that we have for loving God.

But as I’ve shared with you before, the fact that he hears us, first of all, that he’s real, and that he is willing to hear us is unique among the deities that people worship. I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my supplications. He’s there.

He’s real. He exists. And he is listening to the voice of his people. Because he has inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.

So David said, because he’s listening, I’m going to call. I’m not going to stop calling out to him. You know, it puzzles me even knowing that I do it as well.

it puzzles me why when we have access to the very throne room of God and he tells us bring your petitions to me we know that’s there we have more than likely experienced the power of prayer at some point in our lives and yet we don’t take advantage of what he’s given us to use David said because he is there and listening his ear is inclined to me as I would say to my kids he’s got his listening ears on for us then I’m not going to stop calling out to God as long as I live you know, we would be wise to do the same thing. The sorrows of death compassed me and the pains of hell got hold upon me and I found trouble and sorrow. Now these sorrows of death, to compass him about again, that means he’s completely encircled by the sorrows of death.

And I think we probably all at some point or another have felt like we were just surrounded by pain and suffering and tragedy. He said the pains of hell got hold upon me. We wouldn’t say gat, we would say got, but we know what that means.

And I found trouble and sorrow. Interesting turn of phrase there because a lot of times sorrow and trouble aren’t that hard to find. We don’t have to go looking very far, do we?

It tends to find us. Then, called I upon the name of the Lord. So he’s in the depths of despair.

He’s surrounded by sorrow. He feels like the pain of hell has pounced on him. And trouble and sorrow, he’s found them or they’ve found him.

And out of the depths of his despair, he calls out to God. I call upon the name of the Lord. and he says, O Lord, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.

I beg you, I beg you out of the depths of my despair, deliver my soul from this torment that I’m dealing with. And he says in verse 5, Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yea, our God is merciful.

You know what? He is gracious. He does bless us by giving us things that we don’t deserve.

He is righteous. He is on an entire level of holiness that we can’t even begin to comprehend. and God is also merciful.

The distinction between grace and mercy is that grace is giving us what we don’t deserve and mercy is not giving us what we do deserve. And he’s all those things. And because he’s righteous, I’m thankful that he’s also gracious and merciful because in his righteousness, he’d be completely right if he snuffed us out for our sins.

And yet he demonstrates grace and mercy toward us, patience and long-suffering. The Lord preserveth the simple. I was brought low and he helped me.

You know, we get ourselves into situations and we tend to think, okay, if I can just figure this out myself, if I can just be clever enough here and work out a solution to my problem, I’ll be okay. But David said here that God preserves the simple. I’ve heard the phrase over and over through the years that God takes care of children and fools.

And I thought, boy, I’m grateful for that because a lot of times I feel like the fool he’s taken care of. You know, it’s not about our cunning or our solutions or our ability to strategize and fix our life and come up with all the answers, you know what, when it comes right down to it, we are simple people in our understanding. Even the brightest among us are simple in comparison to God.

And we come up against these burdens that quite frankly we can’t deal with and we can’t fix. And sometimes the problems are of our own making. Sometimes they’re of other people’s making.

Sometimes we don’t know where the problems in our life come from, but they are too big for us to solve and there’s nothing for us to do. but fall on our knees before God and say, can you take this? Because we are not wise enough to understand the problem or the solution.

And fortunately for us, the Lord preserves the simple. God looks at us and says, oh my child, you really don’t get it, do you? Here, let me take that for you.

I was brought low and he helped me. You know, at our lowest point, God is still there and willing to help. God is still there and willing to take burdens off of his people.

We are raised, well, up to this point anyway, we are raised in a culture that can be a good thing in some ways and can be a bad thing in some ways. We have been taught, for the most part in our history, in American culture, that we want to be the ones who, we want to be the self-made men. We want to go it alone.

We want to take care of ourselves. We don’t need help from anybody. You know, this country was built by pioneers.

They were the people who left Europe, left wherever, said, you know what, we’re going to take the risk, and we’re going to take care of ourselves, and we’re going to stand and fall on our own two feet. And you know, in some ways in life, that is admirable, and that, I’m afraid, is a characteristic that our country is losing as we go through the generations. But when we carry it over into spiritual matters, we get to a prideful place where we say, you know what, I can do this all on my own.

I’m going to stand on my own two feet. You know what, the man who tries to stand on his own two feet before a holy God is going to end up falling. But as Christians, we think I should be able to handle this on my own.

If I can’t handle this situation, if I can’t handle this burden, if I show weakness here, I’m going to look like I’m unspiritual. What are the shanks going to say about me if they find out I’m struggling with this? What is Frida going to think? And the fact of it is we all have, and I’m not saying that because I think y’all are looking at me and saying those things.

Y’all just, you lucky people just happen to be in my line of vision. The fact of it is we all have these burdens that we struggle with in life. Now it’s different burdens for everybody.

But we all struggle with these things. And the fact of it is pride shouldn’t enter into any of it because we all are unable to carry them on our own. We all are in need of help from God for the things we struggle with.

He says here, I was brought low and he helped me. Again, I don’t have a whole, I understand what they’re going for in this. The phrase, God helps those who help themselves.

We want to inspire work ethic in people, but in spiritual things, I have no use for the statement that God helps those who help themselves. God is not looking for us to say, look, I’m strong. I’ve got most of this, God.

I’ve got most of this burden. I’m meeting most of this need. Why don’t you help me with the last 10% of it?

More often than not, God is waiting for us to humble ourselves and to acknowledge that we’re utterly and completely dependent on him. And so when David was brought low, he called out to God and God helped him. Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.

There’s a rest that God intends us to have. Now, God doesn’t promise us that our entire lives are going to be perfect when we trust him, when we become his children. But there is a rest that we’re supposed to have in the Lord.

I believe there’s a peace that passes understanding, the Bible calls it, that we’re supposed to have. Yes, the circumstances in our life may be completely and utterly out of control, but we’re able to rest in him. But when we try to struggle with our own burdens and say, God, I’ve got this.

I’m handling my life myself. I’ll let you know when I need you. We lose the rest. We lose the peace that he intends us to have.

And so when David got to the point of being brought low, of realizing how simple he really was, and crying out to God to take that burden from him, he was able to say, return unto thy rest, O my soul. You know, we think it’s very scary to give up our burdens to God and say, here, you handle this. Because, again, we think we’re supposed to be on top of it and in control, and we don’t like to give up control so much, do we?

And it seems like it should be such a scary thing to say, God, this problem in my life is completely out of my control. Why don’t you take it? And I’ll just be here in the back seat.

I’ve loved the illustration. You see these bumper stickers with these things on the fronts of cars. And if you’ve got one of these, I haven’t been around in the parking lot to look.

If you’ve got one of these, I’m not criticizing you. It’s a nice thought. But you see these things that say God is my co-pilot.

I understand the thought people are going for there. God is always with me. God is with me all the time.

But I like what I heard a preacher say one time, and I can’t even remember who said it. I don’t want God to be the co-pilot of my life. I want God to be the pilot.

As a matter of fact, I want God to get in the driver’s seat, and meanwhile, I’m going to go get in the trunk and give him the key and close it. You know, that’s probably the safest place for us. Just let God drive us wherever he wants us to go.

But there’s the point I’m trying to make. I had to remind myself for a second. Where was I going with that?

The point I’m trying to make, we think it should be such a scary thing to give God the keys and say, here, you take control. But you know what? When we find the insurmountable burdens and we realize I can’t carry this, I can’t do this anymore, and we give it to God, there’s actually a relief in that.

And while God’s handling the burden, I can sleep now. That doesn’t mean I just laze about and do nothing, but that means this weight has been lifted off of me, and there’s rest, and there’s peace, and there’s just a calmness in knowing that God is in control, and that God will take care of the burden that I couldn’t carry on my own. And you know, it’s ironic, as I’m telling you these things, I’m thinking I might as well just be sitting out there with you listening to this, but nevertheless, here we find ourselves.

Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. God has blessed and dealt bountifully. He’s blessed beyond what we could ask or expect.

You know, when we give our burdens to God, He doesn’t just handle it. He works it out better than we ever could. Now, that doesn’t mean necessarily what we thought was going to happen.

God, I prayed for this and this happened. We’ve got to trust that He sees a longer view of history than we do and He’s working it out. But folks, ultimately, God takes care of things better than we ever could.

And He deals bountifully with us. God doesn’t just bless us a little bit. God blesses us bountifully when we trust him.

For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling. You know, because of sin there is death. We talked about that this morning.

There is physical death. We all, unless the Lord tarries his return, I mean if the Lord tarries his return, excuse me, we are all destined to die one day physically. But there’s that second death that we’ll not taste of in him.

He’s delivered our soul from that eternal death, that eternal separation from him. Thou hast delivered my soul from death. Thou hast delivered mine eyes from tears.

You know, I really look forward to the day when the verse in Revelation is fulfilled where he says, I will wipe away every tear from their eyes. I think I told you about a month ago that at Southgate, several of us were sitting around talking after vacation Bible school, and one of the men said, heaven just, you know, I know we’re going to be with God and that’s exciting and everything, but heaven sounds like it would be boring after the first million years. And I told him, you know, I used to feel that way as well.

You know, what are we going to do? What exactly is going on here that’s going to occupy our time? I said, but you know, after the last several years, I began to understand the allure of a place where there’s no more crying, there’s no more separation, where he wipes away every tear from our eyes.

And you know what? He gives us just a little foretaste of that now. When he takes away the burdens, when he bears the burdens for us and says, just come and rest in me, there’s no need for tears anymore.

He comforts us and he takes care of us. And my feet has delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears and my feet from falling. God upholds us.

And if we’ll listen to him and we’ll follow him, he, he points us in the way that we’re supposed to go. I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. You know, David at any time during his, during his adult life could have fallen under somebody’s sword, could have easily been out of the land of the living.

Saul wanted to kill him. Then I believe it was Ish-bosheth, who was one of Saul’s relatives. There was a civil war for about seven years in the kingdom as David was crowned an Ish-bosheth.

Did I get the right name? Okay. There were two kings that were crowned.

They wanted him dead. There were the Philistines who wanted him dead. His own son wanted him dead at one point.

There life. And yet David says here in verse 9, I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living. God had spared David’s life.

God had protected David. David was not just lucky to have escaped all of these people. David was protected by God.

He was watched over by providence because he trusted in the Lord. I believed, therefore I have spoken. He said, basically, I take that to mean in verse 10, I’m not just saying these things.

These are not just things that sound good, so I’m going to say because they make me sound good. He’s saying, I really believe. And so I have spoken because of that.

I have said these things because I really believe them. I have seen and witnessed and been on the receiving end of the providence and the protection of God. So in this passage, David is talking about a point in his life, one of many.

We don’t know for sure which point in his life he’s talking about. There are some of the Psalms we can look at and say, okay, by context, by things he says, he must be talking about this. He must be talking about this.

And we can go back to the books that his life is chronicled in. And say, okay, this must fall in line with this. There are several other places like this one where we can say that can apply to several circumstances.

Who was trying to kill David this week in this song? But David is referring to a time when he’s been brought to a low point in life. And he’s really just to the end of himself.

I can’t deal with this. I’m surrounded by pain and sorrow, and it’s like hell has just tackled me to the ground. And all I could do was cry out to God.

If you have not ever had one of those circumstances in life, consider yourself very fortunate and watch out because it’s probably coming. I think all of us at some point or another experience that same kind of feeling where, God, I just can’t do this anymore. I was talking to a friend about something late last week and said, I just can’t keep doing this.

Just can’t keep dealing with this particular situation. My friend said, well, don’t do anything stupid. Not what I’m talking about.

And I say, I can’t do this anymore. I just mean, you know, not that I no longer want to be in the land of the living, but I just wish God would take this away from me. I’m tired.

I’m done with this. I’m tired of this situation. But it’s no secret.

people get into circumstances, whether they mean what my friend thought I meant, or whether they mean, God, I just really don’t know what to move here. I’m paralyzed to move in any direction. Whatever it is, we all, I think, get to the point.

People get to the point where they say, I can’t do this anymore. This burden is too great for me. And the good news for us is that God relieves those burdens when we trust in him.

And we can pray, essentially what David did, We forget, we read sometimes in the Bible where somebody called out to God, and we forget that is prayer. You see, they did it in such a way that it was their normal speech. And, you know, we want to be respectful when we talk to the Lord, obviously.

I got really annoyed when I was at OU, the t-shirts that said, Jesus is my homeboy. First of all, I don’t talk that way. I don’t know that I’ve ever called anybody my homeboy.

But second of all, Jesus surely is not my homeboy. He’s my Savior. He’s my Lord.

He is my friend, the Bible says. He is the friend that sticks closer than a brother. We want to be respectful when we talk to the Lord, but there should be a familiarity there as well because He’s also our Father.

He’s also our Father. And the reason it doesn’t sound like prayer to us when these people speak in the Bible, when they speak to God, the reason it doesn’t often sound like prayer is because it’s the way they would talk to anybody else. There was a closeness and a familiarity.

We don’t see them start out with the canned phrases and use their special words. And now if you do that, that’s fine. We all learn to pray somewhere and those things carry forward.

I may have told you before, growing up I would hear my dad praying at home and praying in church and starting out every prayer with, dear Lord, we thank you for this day. I mean, that’s well and good if you mean it. I stopped doing that after I went, when I was in Arkansas, and went to meet some relatives of one of our church members.

I’d never met the relatives before, but they had just lost their daughter. I was asking, you lead them in prayer. They’re looking for some comfort.

And I started out the prayer. I mean, they had lost the daughter an hour before. And I started out the prayer, dear Lord, we thank you for this day.

And they probably didn’t think a thing about it, but I went, oh. I mean, everything within me grimaced. And I thought, that was the dumbest thing I could have said in leading them in prayer at this point.

Now, yes, there’s still a lot to be thankful for in thanking God that we have life and breath for another day. But in my not thinking my formality, I had just said something that potentially could have wounded them because I’m sure we’re not feeling particularly thankful for the day they were going through. Sometimes it helps us if we get past some of our formality in our prayer.

And we just, obviously respectfully, but we speak to God as though He’s here with us. Because He is. And so when David says, I called out to God, I cried out and said, can you help me?

Lord, can you help me? I beseech you, I beg you, deliver my soul. That’s prayer.

And he’s praying for God to deliver him from what he’s dealing with. He’s praying for God to relieve his burdens. Now, I want to caution you in that, but sometimes the answer from God will be no. You’re going through this for a reason, to teach you a lesson, or to strengthen you, or to test you, or something.

God’s answer may be, not now. Sometimes God will relieve the burden. And even if he doesn’t take away the burden we’re dealing with, God is there to pick it up and comfort us as we go forward with it.

I want to look at just a couple things tonight and then we’ll close. On this idea of praying to relieve our burdens. We seek relief from God because trouble is not hard to find.

Now he says in verse 3 that he found trouble and sorrow. I’m sure David did because David made a lot of bad decisions. As good a man as David was, David made a lot of bad decisions and found some trouble and sorrow in his life.

You know what? we can go through life and live blameless lives from a human perspective, obviously not from God’s perspective, but live blameless lives, moral lives from a human perspective, and still trouble and sorrow are going to find us. It’s just the way the world works.

Trouble and sorrow aren’t hard to find. If we go looking for it, we don’t have to look very far. And so because of that, trouble and sorrow abound for us.

They’re out there, they’re easy to find, and we are going to find it on a regular basis. And because of that, we need to be prepared to cry out to God to relieve those burdens, not just struggle with them to show how spiritual we are or hide the struggle that we have with them to show how spiritual we are, but to be honest with God and say, I need the help that only you can provide. So one of the reasons that we are encouraged in Scripture to pray to God to relieve these burdens is because the trouble that’s out there is not hard to find.

Second of all tonight, we seek relief from God because we’re incapable of rescuing ourselves. You know, I’ve already mentioned that it was not David’s wisdom or his strength that delivered him from the burdens that he was dealing with. He says in verse 6, the Lord preserves the simple.

We could substitute the word foolish there for a more modern word. It wasn’t David’s wisdom. It was in his foolishness that God helped him.

It wasn’t in David’s strength. It was in his weakness when he was brought low that God helped him. And we need to understand that there are burdens out there.

We are not supermen and superwomen. There are some things out there that we just can’t handle. I know it hurts to admit that, but there are some things we just can’t carry on our own.

And there are some things that we’re incapable of rescuing ourselves from. And our only option is to call out to God. And I don’t mean that to sound like it’s a last resort because it should be a first resort.

That should be our first instinct is to call out to God when we need Him. But even if it’s not our first resort, we need to realize there are some times that we, that’s our only option, is to call out to God. You know, he answers this, and in our times of weakness and infirmity, we have the promise that his strength is perfect.

He says in 2 Corinthians, My grace is sufficient for thee, and 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. Paul wrote that, meaning that God’s grace was enough for him in times of trouble.

And when Paul was weak, God’s strength was perfect. God’s strength was complete. God doesn’t have just enough grace and strength to handle our difficulties.

God has more grace and strength than we would ever need. And the power of Christ, he deals with those. Third of all, we seek relief from God because no problem, tying into the last one, because no problem is too great for him to handle.

He says, you’ve delivered my soul from death. And as I mentioned when I talked about the resurrection, if he has demonstrated his power over death, what is there that is outside of his control? I mean honestly not one of us the Bible says can add time to our days or cubit or span I can’t remember the the phrasing exactly but we can’t add to our height we can’t add to our days there are certain things that are out of our control certain things that all of us together can’t control and we think with our modern technology and medicine and and health things and everything we have that we can extend our lives I really think we’re just adding to the quality of the life that the quality of the time that God allows us to have anyway.

Somebody asked me if I was going to the gym to try to be healthy and live longer. I said, no, I’m going to the gym so I can eat what I want while I’m here. I know that I can go and do a cardio workout every day from now on, and it’s not going to add a moment to the time that God has given me.

I can’t do anything about life and death issues, really, when you get right down to it. And yet God has already demonstrated time and time again his power over life and death. When God told somebody, when God told Lazarus, come out of the grave, he came out of the grave.

When Jesus said, destroy this temple and in three days I’ll raise it again, he raised up from the dead in three days. He died and even while dead, he had power over life and death. I mean, that’s pretty incredible.

If he has power over life and death and he has delivered our souls from death, What is there that’s outside of his control? There’s nothing that’s outside of his control. Now that doesn’t mean he causes every little thing that happens, but he can step in and put it to right if he wants to.

I believe he does give us free will, but I also believe there are bounds he doesn’t let us step outside of. There’s no problem too great for God to handle. I’ve even got down here a couple of passages, one of them being in Acts chapter 26.

I believe it was Paul who asked, why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead? I go back to this thought. If God, if Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, could raise himself from the dead, what is there that’s outside of his control?

Now, it may feel like things are out of control. It may feel like life certainly is out of my control, out of your control. There are days that I may even be, I may even delude myself into thinking that it’s outside of his control.

Surely he wouldn’t let this happen or that happen. Guys, if he has power over life and death, there’s nothing that he can’t handle. So who better to cry out to for relief when our burdens get too big?

Because he can handle them. And finally tonight, we seek relief from God because he alone can give us rest and healing. He alone can give us rest and healing.

He says in verse 7, Return unto thy rest, O my soul, for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee. Now David didn’t just cheer himself up and talk himself into feeling better. He said the Lord’s dealt bountifully with thee.

And because of that, his soul was able to return to rest. And he talks about walking before the Lord in the land of the living. What he talked about earlier, about being compassed about and the pain of hell, it’s a pretty pitiful picture that he paints there. And then a few verses later, because of what God’s done, I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living.

He’s talking about getting up and going on and moving forward and starting the day anew. Only God can give us the kind of rest and healing that we need from burdens. Now, it’s helpful at times.

It’s been hel

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