You Don't Have to Live Life Exhausted | Crossroads Chruch

Good people. So good to see you here on Pando. My name is Meeko and I serve as the prison director here at Crossroads Church. If you're new to Crossroads, we're a church all about helping people connect with God and discover the life Jesus invites us into, no matter where we've been or what our circumstances look like even today. Listen, we're kicking off a brand new series called Well Played, the game plan for a lighter load. Let's be honest, life be lifin'. Life can get heavy. We carry stress, disappointment, regret, pressure, uncertainty. Sometimes it can feel like we're just reacting to whatever life throws at us. But when we look at the life of Jesus, you see something different. He faced pressure, loss, conflict, challenges, yet he moved through life with a deep sense of peace, purpose. Over the next few weeks, we'll explore practical ways to experience that same kind of freedom, even when we can't control what's happening around us. Today, I lead Pastor Kyle to kick things off by looking at a side of Jesus that many people miss, that he's gentle and lowly. But if the leader you've been looking for isn't harsh or demanding, it's someone who meets you with grace and invites you into a better way to live. Let's check it out. Every day we roll the dice. Another decision, another responsibility, another space to move. We keep chasing the next thing, hoping we'll finally arrive. But Jesus offers something different. He doesn't promise to take away the hard stuff in life, but he does show us a different way to play the game. In Matthew 11, Jesus says, Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Well, hey, everybody. How are you? Good. My name is Kyle. I'm a lead pastor here at Crossroads. I am fresh back from vacation. Fresh back. And this year, the Ranson family, we did vacation a little bit differently. Usually our strategy is to beat you guys to the beach. Our minivan will dust your minivan. So we leave like as soon as school is over, late May, early June. But this year, we went late August or late July, early August. And I'm here to tell you that was a terrible idea. Because when you do that, you get back and all of a sudden back to school season is in your face. You like wake up from a nap and someone makes you jump on a treadmill set at 10. You're like, I was just resting. What are we doing right now? It's terrible. Now, us parents, I know not all of us are parents. That's okay.

I just want to get you kind of a behind-the-scenes view of a parent's mind at back to school season, because it's a little bit conflicted. See, back in the end of school, like in May, we can't wait for summer because we're tired of driving the kids to all of the stuff, all of the play practices and soccer practices and fighting about homework and all that stuff. And so we can't wait for the bliss rest of summer. And it gets here and it's amazing. It's bliss for an entire like two days. And then we remember something that we forgot about last summer, which is that during the summer, all of the kids are right here, like right, right here. And they ask us for stuff like what's for lunch and what's for dinner and do we have any snacks? And she hit me and he kicked me and Charlie bit my finger. And all of these things are annoying. And so on June 1st, we start dreaming about back to school. And then it gets here and our calendars fill up and we're just overwhelmed by them. We literally showed up from vacation to a giant calendar from Amazon on our front porch that we started filling out. And by we, I mean Sarah filled it out and I stopped by sweating. It's horrible. We have three kids in cross country, one in soccer, one in baseball, two who are going to do a school play, one who's doing influence with crossroads, shout out influencers, one of them who's on like a mock trial team, something I don't quite understand, one starting high school, one learning to drive. I only have three children. And it feels insane sometimes, like life is this crazy game and you're not even sure if anybody who's playing the game is actually winning. All you know is you spend most of your life in the car, which is Sarah and I. I counted last year, we drove 24,000 miles each. That's the circumference of the earth. We would pass each other in the driveway, roll down our windows,

Sarah would look at me and be like, hey, I remember you, Kevin, right? This is what life feels like for all of us, even if you're not a parent, and maybe you're a student, you're in high school. you're in college, it's your literal back to school season. You've got new classwork and new schedules and new syllabuses and new social pressures to add to your plate. Even if you don't have any kids, maybe you're an empty nester, maybe you're single, it's still the season where everyone's back in the office. It's go time for all of us. And it can feel overwhelming and exhausting, which is exactly why we're doing this series that we're doing right now, this series we're calling Well Played. But we're asking this very basic question. Is it possible to play the game of life differently in a way that doesn't leave you burnout, overwhelmed and heavy burden? Is that possible? And I'm here to tell you the answer is no. So let's pray, get you out of here. God, thank you so much. Just kidding. The answer from Jesus is actually a resounding yes. And the good news is that this is something that's possible for all of us. You don't have to be a incredibly smart person or an amazingly well-disciplined person. You don't have to get super organized

and have Marie Kondo come over and organize your sock drawer. That's not the secret. This is available for all of us, if, if, if we'll slow down enough to learn to play the game Jesus' way. And that's what we're gonna do in this series. Over the next four weeks, we're actually gonna slow down in a way that I don't know that we've ever done quite that crossroads before. We're gonna spend four straight weeks on one single piece of scripture. Now it might be new for us, but it's not actually new in the history of the church. It's rooted, it's a very ancient practice called Lectio Divina. The idea is you chew on scripture continually over and over and over again. Now I learned early on in my marriage with Sarah, something very important about chewing and sharing desserts with her. When I eat dessert, I like to savor it. I am a small bite, dainty, one pinky out dessert eater. You can judge me if you want to. That's how I do it. Sarah is a wood chipper. Like, like the cake shows up and you look up and look down, it's gone. It's just gone. You're just crumbs.

You're like, what, what, what happened? If you, if you share a cake with Sarah, your best bet is to cut it in half and shotgun your half as fast as you possibly can. If you chew slow, you get less. The Bible's the opposite. If you chew slow, you actually get more. So we're gonna go very slowly through this one particular thing that Jesus said in Matthew chapter 11. Now it happens to be one of my favorite things, maybe my all time favorite thing that Jesus ever said. It's been deeply meaningful to me. It's these words, Matthew 11, 28. Jesus says, Now it's my favorite verse in part because that's an amazing promise. And whether you believe in Jesus or not, you gotta admit, like if that's possible, that would be incredible. It's also my favorite because the address for it happens to be my birthday, Matthew 11, 28. My birthday's November 28th. And in this weird way, God has used that to draw me again and again and again, back to this verse in periods of my life where I feel heavy laden. And I've been in one of those lately. It's been a verse I've actually been meditating on personally now for weeks and weeks and weeks, chewing on it slowly, going over it with God,

because my life has felt heavy burden. I'll walk you a little bit into some of my processing with God. This is my journal. A few weeks ago, I just started to list out the ways that I feel heavy burdens. What are the burdens that I actually feel? I was just trying to have this conversation with God. By the way, I don't journal and write like, dear diary, today, that's not what's here. The reason that I journal is because when I write, my mind like locks in more than if I don't. If I don't write, my brain tends to wonder, is this is the way I can focus with God in conversation? So I'm just writing out some of my burdens. I said, Lord, I'm hiking with a heavy pack, carrying the burden of crossroads, the burden of the future of my family, the burden of the development of my kids, the burden of the growth and the health of my marriage, the burden of the care for Sarah, for my wife, the burden of the care and development of Ben, he's a sophomore, three years left until he leaves my house, three years left to prepare him for life. Eli, one year behind him. Gracie, sweet Gracie, time is ticking. I'd need to model a man who shows her what it means to have a heart that's for her. Our crossroads budget. Y'all don't know this, but summer is budget season.

We work very, very hard to make sure we maximize kingdom impact with every single cent that's given here. Our fiscal year starts on September 1st. It's a months long process of a lot of hard work, a lot of hard decisions to make in that process. 10X, I love 10X. I love what God's doing. My family personally sacrificing for it every single month. And yet it can also feel like a burden. How do we do this thing? How do we reach more people? How do we help God's kingdom grow and expand? This one, my health. Craziest thing happens to me. Every year I get older. I don't know if that happens to you, happens to me. And when I get older, my health doesn't automatically go up. It seems to go down. And I know that exercise is so important. It's always been a critical habit of mine. And yet the older I get, the more things pull on my schedule and I find it harder and harder and harder to make time. Caring for our crossroads staff, taking care of my house, financially providing for my family, being present when my kids need me to be present. This is a big one. If you don't have teenagers, especially you might not know this, so just heads up, warnings,

everybody with a baby in the nursery, this is coming your way. Your teenagers will wanna talk about the important stuff at the exact moment you have zero energy left. I don't know how they know that, but they know and that's when they come to you, 10 o'clock at night. They're like, can we talk? Like, oh my gosh, I think I'm bad. I am old, I ain't got sleep, you know? I wanna be there for them. And I said, father, I carry burdens, they're heavy ones. I can't keep carrying them. I need your help. And I know that if you were to stop and you were to ride out your burdens, the details of them would change, the names would change, the roles you play would change, but the weight would be the same. More or less, it would be the same. See, all of us tend to live a life that is overly burdened and as Jesus says, heavy laden. And the fact of the matter we have to start with is recognizing that it is literally killing us. I can take the next two hours and I can give us all kinds of stats about all kinds of health surveys about the impact of the heavy burden life that we live, the impact of stress on us. I won't do that.

Chances are you've already heard some of them, but I just wanna jog your memory and set the framework with just a single one. This is the result of a 20 year long study that the National Institute of Health did. They say this, levels of stress in America have reached an all time high with more than 80% of surveyed adults reporting emotional effects from prolonged stress. Decades of research have linked the stress response to multiple indices of physical and emotional health ranging from depression, anxiety and sleep disorders to cardiovascular disease, diminished recovery from cancer, higher rates of chronic disease and earlier mortality. Guys, the way we're playing the game is not working. It's not. It's literally taking years off of our lives. And to us, a heavy burden people, Jesus comes along and he says, come to me and I will give you rest. I just wanna stand here today and let you know that that's true. That can happen for you. Again and again in seasons of stress in my life, as I return to the same exact scripture, as I slow down, as I chew on it, as I practically apply it, what I find is that all of the stuff is still there. All of the deadlines are still there. All of the expectations are still there.

All of the kids stuff I gotta drive them to, still there. All of the kids, still there. And yet, and yet my load feels so much lighter and easier and joyful. And I'm telling you, you can experience the same exact thing if, if, if you lean in. Now, the starting spot of how to play the game Jesus' way is the first three words that we heard. Matthew 11, 28, Jesus says, come to me. And today is about you getting a rep in of coming to him. This is critical. You gotta understand. If you ask the question, Jesus, how do I play the game your way? Is that the easy unburdened life? That sounds amazing. What do I do? Jesus doesn't give you a list of principles. He doesn't say, here's the seven tips of how to play the game. Here's five principles for playing. It's not about principles. it's about proximity to a person, to Him. And if you don't come to Him, you will not experience rest. I know that a lot of us, you know, we hear that and we're like, great, come to Him. How in the world would I do that? What does that look like? That's what we're gonna help you

literally do and experience today, starting right now. Today's gonna feel a little bit different. The band's gonna come out and do a song in just a minute. It's not a sing-along song. It's a song meant to set a table for you to have a moment to begin the process with God. So we're gonna do right now. I want you to get out your phone and open your notes app. And if you didn't bring a phone today, congratulations, you are so much better than the rest of us. Get out a piece of paper, steal a pen from your neighbor because you're gonna wanna write. And what I wanna invite you to do is to list out your burdens. You heard some of mine. What are yours? Some of them you probably carried in top of mind. You woke up thinking about it this morning. You thought about it during worship. The moment you heard that this was a talk about burdens, you went there. Others are buried a little bit deeper in your pack. Over these next four minutes, I want you to bring as many of them to mind as you possibly can. Give you some prompts if it's helpful. You could start by listing all the roles you play in life. I am a husband, I'm a father, I'm an employee, I'm a boss, I'm a brother, I'm a son, I'm a friend, a neighbor.

What are the roles you play in life? And as you list those roles, just start to list every stress you have attached to them. As the song goes on, you can go a layer deeper. You can think about the people in those roles. It'd be the names of friends, the names of family members, the names of people at work. What are the stresses that you carry for them, about them? Just want you to bring all that to mind right now. This is the beginning of what it looks like to come to Him. Let's do that right now together. ♪ When I feel distant, You close my eyes ♪ ♪ You close the gap, nothing can come between us ♪ ♪ No high, no depth can separate ♪ ♪ There is no life apart from You ♪ ♪ In the morning and evening, You're reminding my soul ♪ ♪ That You're closer than ever, never far, cause I know ♪ ♪ There's nowhere I could run, but You won't be ♪ ♪ There's nowhere I could hide, but You won't find me ♪ ♪ Even at my worst, You'll never leave ♪ ♪ Everywhere I go, You're right beside me ♪ ♪ There's nowhere I could run, but You won't be ♪ ♪ There's nowhere I could hide, but You won't find me ♪ ♪ Even at my worst, You'll never leave ♪ ♪ Everywhere I go, You're right beside me ♪ ♪ As I draw near, You're drawing close ♪ ♪ This is my confidence in You ♪ ♪ You won't relent, You have my heart ♪ ♪ All that I am, I give to You ♪ ♪ In the morning and evening, You're reminding my soul ♪

♪ That You're closer than ever, never far, cause I know ♪ ♪ There's nowhere I could run, but You won't be ♪ ♪ There's nowhere I could hide, but You won't find me ♪ ♪ Even at my worst, You'll never leave ♪ ♪ Everywhere I go, You're right beside me ♪ ♪ There's nowhere I could run, but You won't find me ♪ ♪ And you won't be there ♪ ♪ There's nowhere I can hide and you won't find me ♪ ♪ Even at my worst you'll never leave me ♪ ♪ Everywhere I go you're right beside me ♪ ♪ Cause I wanna be near you ♪ ♪ Close to your heart, wrapped in your arms near you ♪ ♪ Tuned into your voice through all of the noise here ♪ ♪ Your presence is where I know who I am ♪ ♪ I never wanna leave your side knowing you changed my life ♪ ♪ I wanna be near you ♪ ♪ Close to your heart, wrapped in your arms near you ♪ ♪ Tuned into your voice through all of the noise here ♪ ♪ Your presence is where I know who I am ♪ ♪ I never wanna leave your side knowing you changed my life ♪ ♪ I wanna be near you ♪ ♪ Close to your heart, wrapped in your arms near you ♪ ♪ Tuned into your voice through all of the noise here ♪ ♪ Your presence is where I know who I am ♪ ♪ I never wanna leave your side knowing you changed my life ♪ ♪ I wanna be near you ♪ ♪ Close to your heart, wrapped in your arms near you ♪ ♪ Tuned into your voice through all of the noise here ♪ ♪ Your presence is where I know who I am ♪ ♪ I never wanna leave your side knowing you changed my life ♪

♪ I wanna be near you ♪ ♪ Close to your heart, wrapped in your arms near you ♪ ♪ Tuned into your voice through all of the noise here ♪ ♪ Your presence is where I know who I am ♪ ♪ I never wanna leave your side knowing you changed my life ♪ ♪ I never wanna leave your side knowing you changed my life ♪ Our prayers become labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I'm gentle and lowly at heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. If you wanted to take your burden, I want you to agree with my prayer right now. I want you to carry the weight of my life. There are so many things on my back that I don't know how to carry. It's too heavy for me. Would you show me what my job is? And would you help me trust you with yours? Amen. Amen. Well, in 2007, right about the time that I entered the workforce, there was a book sweeping the nation. Every office was reading this book. It was amazing. The premise was incredible. It's called The Four-Hour Work Week. Escape the nine-to-five, live anywhere, and join the new rich.

Sign me up. Sounds amazing. Now, what's interesting is 19 years later, do you know what I don't hear anybody talking about? The four-hour work week. Do you know why? Because it doesn't work. At the start of this, I wanna be really clear with what Jesus is not saying with these words. He is not inviting us into the four-hour work week. In fact, work in the Bible is actually good. It's part of what you and I need in order to live a purpose-filled, satisfying life. Before, if you go to the earliest parts of the Bible, before the world broke, when everything was good, God designed work. Genesis 2.15 says, It's part of the original purpose. See, the problem is not the work itself. The problem is the way that we work that ends in us feeling heavy-laden. Let's go back to the words of Jesus. Matthew 11.28. here is to a people who work and have this heavy-laden life. Now, in a bizarre way, a heavy-laden life has become like a modern merit badge. It's how we know we're doing life right. I mean, imagine if somebody came up to you and you said,

hey, how are you doing? And they said, great. My life feels pretty easy, pretty light. You would think that person was a loser. You would be like, what's wrong with you? You're clearly a slacker. You're clearly not a hard worker. See, we think that we're doing it right if we feel this stress, if we feel the weight of it. And the reason for that is because we've got a weight of expectations on us that doesn't come from Jesus. The weight is expectations. And the one who sets the weight of expectations is the one you work for, the one who defines your win. What Jesus invites us to in this Scripture and other places in the Bible is to work as though we work for him. Colossians 3.23 says, And this is the second adjustment to your game. Practically, you need to make if you want to play it Jesus' way. It's let him define your win. Let's go back to Matthew 11.28. If you just paused right there, what would you expect next from somebody who promises you rest? I would expect something like, I'll give you rest. Therefore, take my lawn chair upon you and sit in it. Right? That's not what he says. The next words are, take my yoke upon you. My yoke. Yoked is one of my favorite Gen Z, Gen Alpha slangs. I love it. It's awesome.

You know, that dude is yoked. Like, you know, that's a super muscly guy, right? The other day I was at my best friend's house and his daughter, she's 15, she described me as muscly. And I was like, wow, thank you. That's, you really think so, huh? And she goes, well, yeah, it was that or doughy. And that seemed mean. I was like, yeah, that, I'm glad you didn't say that out loud. That would have been mean. The way we use yoked to mean strength is actually indicative of its original meaning in this context. There's kind of two here, but they both have the connotations of strength and work. One is, a yoke is an actual wooden object placed on the back of an animal, usually an ox, and it's to help them bear weight, to literally pull the weight of a plow through the dirt or bear the weight of a cart on their back. That's one legitimate use of the word. And the other in this context, a yoke, was the set of expectations, the definition of what a winning life looks like from every single rabbi. And every rabbi had their own yoke. And so Jesus comes along as this entirely different kind of a rabbi, this entirely different spiritual teacher. And he says something wild and radical about his yoke.

Verse 30, he says, my yoke is easy. Easy? How can a yoke be easy? How can a burden be an unburden? But that's what he claims. Now, easy is a little bit misleading. You and I tend to associate easy with effortless, and that's not what he's saying here. It doesn't mean effortless. This word in its original definition means kind, good, pleasant, and well-fitting. Now, the opposite of the yoke that's kind, good, pleasant, and well-fitting is one that's not well-fitting. If you put an actual piece of wood on an animal and an actual yoke, you gotta make sure it fits well. If it doesn't, it's gonna rub in the wrong way, and it'll start as a minor irritation, and eventually, it'll open up a sore on the skin. It'll start to bleed. That can get infected. And it makes the labor of the animal really, really hard. For many of us, this is how work feels for us. This is how our life feels for us. The labor of our whole life, it feels hard. It feels exhausting. It's because we're wearing the wrong yoke. We're letting somebody or someone else or something else define our win instead of Jesus.

And if you let Jesus define your win, he changes it. So you and I, we tend to define the wins in our life as outcomes. I'll be a winning mom if my kids end up getting into X college, right? I'll be a winner at work if I do these certain things, if I hit this promotion, this thing. We define it as outcomes, but Jesus doesn't look at our life and judge our work based on outcomes. He's so much more interested in attitudes. And if you can make this switch, it changes everything. Not be like, man, he's interested in attitudes? What does that even mean? If you go to the Bible and you say, what is the biblical word for outcome? The answer is fruit. The fruit is the outcome of the work of a plant. And if you said, well, what is the fruit that Jesus wants from us? He gives us a very clear answer, Galatians 5. But the fruit of the spirits, what he wants you to produce as you follow him, is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such things there is no law. In other words, if these are the things that are produced as you work, there is no other requirement, no other law that you are meant to fulfill.

And again, we hear that and we're like, man, no, but I gotta make gains because at work we're measured against our gains. But Jesus says in Matthew 16, 26, what profit is it to a man if he gains the entire world? You work so hard that every outcome that you ever wanted to have happen, every retirement goal you had for your accounts, every degree you wanted to get, every promotion you wanted to get, every college you wanted to get your kids into, whatever your outcomes are, all of them, you got all of them, you gain the whole world. What profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? What will a man give in exchange for his soul? If you go back to our scripture, Matthew 11, 28, did you notice what Jesus promises rest for? It's not our bodies. Verse 29 says, you will find rest for your souls. See, the miracle that Jesus offers us is not a body at rest. He offers a miracle. He offers a miracle. He says you can have a soul at rest inside a body in motion. This is wild what he promises. I mean, think about that. What would life feel like if you were to go through all of your life, you were to do the things, you were to show up,

you were to meet your responsibilities, but the whole time your soul was at rest? That's the promise. He actually says he will give you that rest. But here's the catch. He will only give you the rest when you give him the outcomes, when you trust him with the weight of the things beyond your control that you're not meant to carry. You have to give him the outcomes and then he'll give you the rest. You can't wear him on your back. I had a meeting probably five or six weeks ago with a guy named Jim Bechtel. Jim is a co-founder of Crossroads and he's currently on our board. And he met with me just to check on me. And in the course of our conversation, he said something to me that stood out. He said, Kyle, you cannot bear the weight of the outcomes of Crossroads on your back. That is not your responsibility. That's on God. I was like, what? Are you supposed to tell me stuff like we're all counting on you and work hard and check my calendar and make sure I'm working hard enough? He's like, no, no. By the way, Jim has his doctorate in leadership.

Jim's day job is mentoring CEOs. He said something else to me that was really interesting. He said, you know, Kyle, most CEOs, including most Christian CEOs are fools. And I was like, wow, okay, why? He said, well, they carry the heavy burden of outcomes on their back, specifically for work that are beyond their control. They push so hard, they obsess over them. They take all the weight on their shoulders and then they get to the end of their life, the end of their careers. And they realize when it's too late that they carried the wrong weight. They look at their families, the people who needed love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness and faithfulness and self-control from them, and they didn't get it. And it's too late because that's a fool. He said, Kyle, do not be a fool. I think many of us inadvertently, we live the life of a fool. We're carrying the wrong weight. And at the same time, it's killing us. It's killing us. So the third adjustment you have to make to your game, if you wanna play it Jesus' way,

you have to hand him the weight. Jim Collins wrote a leadership book, much better than the four-hour work week, by the way, much better, called Good to Great, highly recommend it. And in this book, Jim and his research team, they set out to determine what differentiates a company from being nearly good to one that's truly great. And one of the things that they found, unexpectedly is what they came to describe as a level five leader. And a level five leader doesn't fit the mode of what we typically think about when we think of like a powerful, effective, inspiring leader who's gonna get us further than we get on our own. It's entirely different. Here's what he says about Level 5 leaders. He says, While Level 5 leaders can come in many personality packages, they are often self-effacing, quiet, reserved, and even shy. Level 5 leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated. In contrast, two-thirds of the comparison companies had leaders with gargantuan personal egos that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company. Level 5 leaders, listen to this, display a workmanlike diligence, more plow horse than show horse. Collins discovered that the leaders that are most helpful in our lives,

the most important, impactful leaders in the world, are people who show up to their offices and even though they're on top, they put themselves on the bottom. Even though they could ask everyone else to carry the weight, they decide they're going to be the plow horse with the yoke on its back, pulling forward to bless everybody else, to go under everyone. Well, 2,000 years before Collins made this discovery, Jesus said, this is what leaders who look like him are. And he said, this is the leader that he is. Listen to the verse we've been looking at. Matthew 11, 28. Gentle and lowly in heart. We did the I Am series a number of months ago. We're looking at the seven I Am statements from the book of John. This is maybe the most important I Am statement Jesus says in all of scripture. I am gentle and lowly in heart. Why? Because heart is not about feelings or emotions in a moment. Heart, the literal meaning of this word, is the driving, motivating core of someone. It's who they most truly are. And when Jesus describes himself as the leader in our lives, when Jesus describes his heart, by the way, this is the only place in the Bible where Jesus reveals his heart. He says it's gentle and lowly.

The word lowly means a station in life. It's the same word that Paul uses in Romans 12, 16, when he says, don't associate with the haughty, but associate with the lowly. It's the lowest person on the totem pole. It's the person who, if you were going somewhere, you would have them carry all the bags. And Jesus says, that's me. That's my heart. See, this is the crazy gospel. We sang earlier the song about he's holy, he's exalted, he's above all. And that's true. The one with all the power, all the might in the universe, the one with the right to lord over you instead came to serve under you, to put himself lower than you to carry the weight of your life. He was always saying this in his ministry, and no one was understanding. He said it to the disciples over and over and over again. Even at the very last meal that he had with them, the last supper, he said the same thing to them. Matthew 20, 28, he said, the son of man, him, did not come to be served, but to serve. The foundation of your relationship with God is not how much you will serve him. It starts with how much you'll let him serve you. Will you let him carry the weight of your life? Will you hand it to him? Because he won't reach in and take it. You got to give it to him.

On our vacation, we went hiking. And by hiking, I mean like a lot of hiking. We hiked 112 miles on our vacation. And you might sound like that sounds terrible. And that's okay. I didn't invite you on the vacation. It wasn't for you. It was for me, okay? And we love to hike as a family. Now, when we hike, this thing would play out, which is Eli far ahead of the rest of us. This little dot here, this is Eli far in the distance, once again, out in front of everybody. And that's because Eli is our natural athlete. He's 14. He played club baseball. And before this last season, I was like, Eli, you know, your natural athlete thing, it's going to wear out at some point. So you really need to like, you know, lift weights and practice at home and try really hard. And he said, thank you, promptly ignored everything I said. And then led his team in batting and made the all-star team. And so, you know, he's got this attitude of like, I am the ultra athlete. And he would annoy his brother and sister as we would hike. Like we'd be climbing some steep stairs up in the middle of a mountain and he'd be like hopping them. Like, is this hard for you guys? It's so easy, you know? And then towards the end of our trip,

we hiked up to this mountain lake. And it was a steep hike. I mean, 1500 feet of elevation gain, maybe more in a short amount of time. And we're all winded. We're out of breath. And we're miles in the wilderness, miles away from everything. And Eli starts having trouble. Eli, I don't know if he didn't eat breakfast that morning. I don't know if he would have. is sick a little bit, but he starts having trouble hiking. And I could see in his mind this turmoil because Eli, in Eli's mind, is not the one who needs help. Eli, in Eli's mind, is the one who can carry the weight, the one who's got it, the one who can keep going, the one who can push and just make it on his own. But he would continue to just kind of stumble and he would sit down and he'd take a break and he'd get his camel back and he'd drink some water and he'd stand back up and he'd try again, he'd hike maybe a hundred yards and he'd sit back down. So finally I said, hey, Eli, I would love to carry your pack. How about you hand me your backpack? And I could see this pride fight in his 14-year-old mind. I don't want to be the one who can't do it. I don't want to be the one who can't carry the weight. I could see it, I could see him wrestling. And so I went again, I said, hey, buddy, I would love to carry the weight for you.

He finally said, okay, dad. And he unflipped his pack and hand it to me. I put it on my back, lifted him up and together we walked the miles back to the trailhead. I'm telling you, you have a father who's so much better than that, who as much as I would love to carry the weight for Eli, he would love to carry your weight so much more. But you have to hand it to him. He's not gonna take it from you. You have to hand it to him. I'm gonna give you a moment right now to do that. Earlier, we made the list of our burdens. We brought them to mind. I want you to get back out that list, that note in your phone or that piece of paper you wrote on. I'm gonna walk you through practically how to hand them to him. And to do this, we're gonna use our imaginations. And your imagination is a powerful tool. You can access things that are true that you can't see with your imagination. Jesus all the time used imagination. He would tell stories, parables, have people visualize things to explain who he is and how to engage with him. We're gonna do something similar right now. I want you to look at that list and just read it through. Those are the weights that you carry on your back. Now close your eyes.

And imagine you're on a trail and you're hiking. And on your back is a heavy pack. Feel the shoulder straps pulling down on your shoulders. Feel the ache in your lower back. The strain in your legs. The breath in your lungs that comes hard. As you're hiking, you notice something. There's someone coming up on the trail next to you. You turn and it's Jesus. He says, hey, how about we go sit down on the side of the trail for just a minute? Imagine pulling over and sitting down with him. You take off your pack. You put it on the ground in front of you. And then Jesus turns and he says, hey, what's in the pack? Open the top and take out the first burden. Whichever is top of mind for you. Whichever is top of mind for you. Maybe it's the one you've been trying not to think about, but as you did the exercise earlier, it just came back in full force. Or maybe you woke up this morning thinking about it, even when you didn't want it to. Jesus says, tell me about it. What's that burden? And what does it feel like to carry it? Tell him right now. What does it feel like to carry it? And what does it feel like to carry it? And what does it feel like to carry it?

And what does it feel like to carry it? Jesus is incredibly present. As you were telling him, he was locked in with you. Kind eyes, smile on his face, listening and nodding. When you're done, he says, hey, how about you hand it to me? How about you let me carry that weight for you? He extends his hands out. Give him the burden. Right now in your imagination, place it in his hands. It's crazy, he seems happy to have it. He smiles and puts it into his pack, and then he turns back to you, says, hey, how about you hand me the whole bag? And just scooting that pack from in front of you to in front of him, all your burdens. He picks it up, slings it onto his back, stands and offers you his hand, pulls you to your feet, says, hey, do you feel lighter? The weight's gone from your shoulders. Stand up straight. I want you to, in your seat, just stretch your back. Feel what it feels like to not carry the weight. He says, why don't we walk together? I'll show you your job, and I'll carry the burden. Father, this is what we want. We want to be the people who carry the weight you've designed us for, not the weight you haven't designed us for, God. Would you train us now and over these next four weeks to be a people who readily, easily and excitably hand you the burdens of our life, stop us from taking them back? Lord, retrain how we play this game. Four weeks from now, we want to be a people who are light and free in a way we never have been before.

We trust you to do this work, God, and we invite you to come near. Thank you for being God who loves us, serves us, and carries the weight. Amen. Thanks for spending a few minutes with us today. My encouragement is simple. Don't just hear God's word today, but take one step because of it. Maybe that's opening your Bible. Maybe it's spending a few quiet minutes in prayer today. Maybe it's forgiving someone. Maybe it's asking someone for forgiveness or simply saying yes to whatever God is putting in front of you today. What I would even encourage you is to take a next step and even check out our courses on our profile. We have a daily devotion that we do called The Walkout that we've prepared just for you that you can lock in with every single day, and we also have cohorts there as well. You can check out the cohorts on the courses page, and those are designed for you to actually do alongside friends or anybody that you're around. You can actually gather as a group and you can walk through those together. Whatever that next step is, take it, and if this message encouraged you, we'd love to hear from you. Send us a videogram or write to us at prison at crossroads.net. Our team reads every letter. We love to walk alongside you. Until next time, keep pursuing Jesus, keep opening his word, keep saying yes to him one day at a time. We'll see you soon.