I'm not going to keep you very long this evening.
But this. subject that I selected this evening kind of
goes back to a lesson that I gave not too awful long ago, a
segment of that and kind of maybe expounds upon it a little
bit when I, when I gave a lesson here recently about about
trials, in our life and finding joy in those trials, One of the
examples I gave was like we come along sometimes and we take our
trials with us in a little suitcase or whatever and we try
to set those things down at the foot of God and then we just go
ahead and pick them back up. I was discussing that with
several of you know Billy Underhill and he said well
that's the gunny sack. I said, gunnysack what do you
mean? He goes on to explain?
Well, we take that gunny sack and we full of full of our all
of our problems and we and we set him at the foot of God.
And then, yet we after we get through talking with God, we
grab the gunny sack back up, and make sure everything's still
back in there. And we take off with it again.
Instead of leaving it with God, and this is something that all
of us deal with in life, we have problems.
We have, we have burdens, we have things that we deal with in
our mind or or even physically. And these are all things that we
put in this gunnysack. And for the purpose of, of
explaining this let's just say that the problems that we have
are rocks that we feel the gunny sack full of some of these
things are small, little Pebbles that we put in the gunny sack
and some of them are just really huge boulders.
Big problems that we deal with in our life but we all have one,
every one of us has one of these things because of the things
that we struggle with in life. And none of us have asked for
that. And some of the problems and
some of the weight of the gunny sack is because of decisions we
have made in our own lives and some of those decisions are big
problems that we deal with and some of them are very small that
we deal with. But sometimes there are things
that are out of and beyond our control.
That are in this gunnysack. If you want to say, Things that
we have no control over that. We just deal with in life.
There are all kinds of stones that we feel this gunny sack
with and one of those stones may be simply regret Regret four
times that you lost your temper. You said and did things that you
couldn't take back. How many times?
Have we said something and wish we could just grab those words
right back. I mean, almost the moment that
we let them out of our mouths but we want wish, we could get
them back because we see how much damage was done just
instantly. Regret for days of lost time,
not spent with our loved ones, with our family with with our
children or with our parents or whatever it may be.
But we've made the selfish decisions instead to do things
that we wanted to do instead of spending time, doing things for
others, regret, for years that you lost your priorities regret
for years spent on, addicting yourself to whatever it may be,
whether it be working or whether it be Other things that distract
us from life or our may possibly even drugs or alcohol.
Regret for years serving ourselves instead of serving
God. Wasted Years and so on.
All of us have regrets if we all had to live our life over, we
would probably know that. That's not a, that's not
something that I want to put in that gunny sack and we would
avoid it but we've made some of these to these these decisions.
Excuse me and our gunnysack is full of these things and he
maybe even regret what whatever it is.
One guilty Stone after another, you placed it, we placed it in
this gunnysack and we have to carry this burden around.
For a long time, maybe even the most of our life sag gets a
heavy. We get.
So tired, feel hopeless, and desperate.
And how can we even think about the future when we're just
dealing with the problems that we're facing every day when we
get up out of bed, the very first thing that pops in to our
head. Sometime are the problems that
we're going to face today that we faced yesterday and we Face
the day before and we Face the day before.
No wonder some people walk around with such a look of
Despair and look so miserable and they have such a frown on
their face and there seems to be almost Almost no spirit in their
life because they're dealing with problems day after day,
after day after day. And this may be one of the
reasons why so many turned all kind of different types of
addictions as a trial to distract them from the problems
of life. And that can be that can be
alcohol, that can be drugs, that can be work, that can be just
anything at all that would distract us from dealing with
the problems that we have, whatever may be.
Sometimes people think that even, you know, just if they
avoid these things that they will just go away and something
may take that burden away. but, When we look back down again,
there's the gunnysack still there, right?
At our feet. And we take it with us wherever
we go. Some will take this sack to work
with him. They'll become consumed in their
work. We've seen this they all arrive
early to work because that gets them away.
Maybe from their problems, they're thinking about their
work and they become, they were colic to become to be able to
take their mind off of things that they're dealing with every
day. But at the end of the day, they
pick the gunny sack up and go right back to work.
Back to back home and take the gunny sack with them.
Or some people may carry the gunnysack home with them.
They get the sack, they set it on the floor, they get
themselves comfortable, they pop, open the can out of the
refrigerator and they take a few drinks of alcohol or whatever it
may be. And that kind of calms their
nerves and they may get their mind off of their problems for a
little while. But then when that effects of
that we're off, there's the gunnysack still waiting for them
sitting right at their feet. Or you make drag your sack along
with you to other people and Friends.
And you take the gunnysack and you take each one of the rocks
out and you set it out and you talk about it and you take the
next one out and you talk about that and you talk about this one
and you talk about that one. But at the end of the
conversation that person sits there and listens and listens
all intently and you describing all of these things, one by one
and the emphasize attempt sympathize with you excuse me
and that's all helpful sometimes but But when you leave, you take
all those rocks and you put them back in the gunny sack and you
walk away. With all the problems still and
sometimes we may think that we're expecting a different
result. Another thing we do with our
gunnysack is we take some of the stones out and we throw them at
those that we love. We become so frustrated. with
the burdens that we carry that we take our frustration out on
other people, Upset. We're discouraged, whatever it
may be. And we may throw the stones at
others that we love. the reason we continue to have such
problems in a burden about this is, is doubt I think we doubt
that we may never be able to solve any or get through to the
other side of the problems we carry with us everyday.
We doubt God's ability to take the burdens away, would go to
him in prayer and ask him to take the pain away, the
suffering, that oppression the load, the sorrow.
We Lay the gunny sack at his feet and say, God, here are all
my problems. Please take all these away so I
can get through this. Then we turn right around and
pick up the gunny sack again, instead of leaving it at God's
feet. We act as if we don't think God
has the ability or the power to remove these problems from our
lives. We lack faith, that God can
actually help us and that's hard for us to do sometimes is just
to let it go. Probably one of the harder
things that we will do in life is to let things go.
When we have no control, especially over those things.
Now, that doesn't mean that we aren't going to have problems
that we can solve. We can make choices in our live
to, to solve some of the problems that we deal with.
If we have financial problems, we can make the decision that
we're not going to buy this or we're not going to buy that.
And we're not going to we're not going to spend money on things
unnecessarily and we can work our way out of those things.
But sometimes there are problems that we cannot solve on our
Roan. But James says, but let him ask
in faith with no doubting for, He Who doubts is like a wave of
the sea driven and tossed by the wind for.
Let not that man. Suppose that he will receive
anything from the Lord. James won a verses six through
seven. You see God says for us to give
it to him and yet when we ask God to forgive it to him, we
want to take it back. It doesn't make any sense for us
to think that way. And so the result is a person
that just trudges through life day after day after day weighed
down by all these problems bad choices, mistakes and sins of
the past. So how do we solve the problem?
How do we get to the other side? How do we get any relief from
the burdens? Jesus says, in Matthew 11,
verses 28 through, 30, come to me.
All you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest,
take my yoke upon you and learn of 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, I may think, well, I've
tried that, you know, I tend church.
I pray, I read my Bible but I haven't received any relief. and
if that's the way you feel, in other words, you just have shown
up to church and you shown up to worship and you've just read
your Bible and you've Maybe not recognized, or accepted the
graciousness of God and his ability and his power to
accomplish what you've asked for were failing.
We must have faith that he has the ability.
But Jesus words are come to me. You know, it's easy to look for
a solution our burdens in the wrong places.
Maybe we've tried to deal with our problems of the past.
Some kind of All these, these problems that we try to fix on
our own? We've read books, we've maybe
want to personal counseling. We've talked to friends.
But none of that's worked for us.
Jesus says come to me so I can help you with the burden of your
problems and sin. Jesus said he's the solution.
For your burdened soul. Peter said this about God,
casting all your care upon him for he cares for you.
We know God cares for us. But we need to have faith that
God cares for us, and we need to believe that he can take care of
us. It's a wonderful thing that we
have a savior and a God that knows that we're dealing with.
All these things and they can help us with the burdens if
we'll just come to him. The writer in, Hebrews
encourages us with these words Hebrews 4 and verses 15 through
16. For we do not have a high priest
who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses.
But was in all points tempted. As we are yet without sin, Let
Us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace that we may
obtain mercy and find Grace to help in time of need nice
primarily talking about our sin here.
But he talks about our weakness, our Frailty.
Are Mallet, he's either and Thayer says, either in body or
in mind. And we have a problem realizing
that we cannot solve our problems.
All on our own, you know, that's what we tend to do.
And especially when we've done that, all of our life, we've
fixed our own problems. We've never relied on others to
fix the problems for us. We've taken care of our own
problems. We've, we've Just deal with
them. However we have to deal with
them and we solved our own problems.
Then we get to a point where we come to a hurdle and we come to
a burden so big and we try to solve it on our own and that's
that's the direction that we think and we don't think about
turning it over to God. but this tells me when he talks about
this weakness and Frailty in Almaty, Of either body or Soul,
it tells me that I'm not strong enough to bear this, all alone.
And he tells us that we can come to the throne of grace boldly.
They are says that that is freedom and speaking unreserve
adenosine speech openly frankly, without concealment, without
ambiguity free and Peerless confidence.
Cheerful, courage, boldness Assurance.
We can boldly go to God and ask for just what we need because he
says here that we may find Mercy and Grace to help in time of
need. We need God.
We need Jesus, we need help from time to time and we will not be
able to solve all of our problems on our own, and we have
to have faith that God is there, and is willing, and has the
power and the ability to help us in solving these problems.
You know why? Because we need that.
We need it. I can't do it all.
Neither, can you? So we need to go to him.
There's nothing to be afraid of. He's just waiting for you to
take your gunny sack. And poured out at his feet.
And leave it there. Turn all your problems over to
him. Empty the sack.
Don't leave anything in it. Turn it all over to him.
And let God help us with our burdens.
We thank you for listening to our podcast.
Put on by the Church of Christ at 22:15 plans.
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