Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] I want to open up our passage that I want to share on this morning. Passage from Matthew 11:28 30. Let me read it. It'll be on the screen behind me. Or you can follow along in your Bible.
[00:00:16] Matthew 11:28 30.
[00:00:19] If you were tired from carrying heavy burdens, anyone a little bit tired carrying heavy burden, come to me and I will give you rest.
[00:00:31] Take the yoke I give you, put it on your shoulders and learn from me. I am gentle and humble and you will find rest. This yoke is easy to bear and this burden is light.
[00:00:48] Let's pray. Father, thank you. Thank you for your word. It's a lamp to our feet. It's a light to our path.
[00:00:57] As we've sung today. It's the firm foundation that we choose to build our life upon. When the world would offer us shifting sand, we choose the word of God as the foundation that we build our life upon. Lord, would you speak to us, each of us, whether we've been walking with you from for 50 years or whether we're yet to take our first step with you today.
[00:01:22] Would you speak to us and would we hear your invitation to come in Jesus name? Amen.
[00:01:32] This morning I want to continue our conversation around discipleship. I shared a few weeks ago that I believe that God is calling us on a season of rediscovering to discipleship.
[00:01:44] Discipleship is the call that Jesus gave. He said, go into all the world, make disciples of all nations.
[00:01:55] I've been having conversations, lots of conversations in the last six months, and I've been talking a lot about discipleship. What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ? What does it mean to make disciples? Do you know, when I have that conversation with so many people, I hear them say, well, I'm not very good at that, or I don't know if I know enough about discipleship. And I look at these people and I look at the lives and I look at the fruit from their ministry, and I say, you're doing it. You probably just don't know you are.
[00:02:29] And I'm praying and believing that in this next season we will find a greater understanding of what it means to be a disciple and what it means to make disciples of all nations.
[00:02:43] Because if we are not a part of making disciples, we are missing out on the most exhilarating part of being a follower of Jesus. It's the greatest thing to be a part of, to see somebody come to Christ and walk with them on that journey towards knowing him.
[00:03:02] And we want to hear that invitation today. But but before we freak everybody out and go, do I have to make disciples? Not yet. Let me just talk about what it means to be a disciple. Yeah. Can we start with that and see that out of that grace that God and Jesus is offering, that we would find a way to be able to make disciples?
[00:03:26] I've got a friend who I've asked to disciple me in this season.
[00:03:30] A man who loves his family, loves the church.
[00:03:35] And as we began this conversation around discipleship, he's in a season that I'm yet to get to.
[00:03:42] I need his voice in my life. I need his knowledge, I need his wisdom.
[00:03:48] I'm doing my best to serve and lead in this place, but I need leadership. I need someone speaking into my world as well.
[00:03:56] As we compared notes on discipleship, we both landed in this verse in this passage, Matthew 11, 28, 30.
[00:04:08] In this passage, we see two invitations and two promises.
[00:04:14] We're going to look at these today. Two invitations and two promises.
[00:04:21] And I would just ask that you would lean into this and you would say, jesus, what are you saying to me in the invitation and the promise that you offer with that invitation, I'm discovering that discipleship looks different for everybody.
[00:04:44] But at the heart of it, it's found within this verse.
[00:04:49] Here's the first invitation. Jesus says, come to me.
[00:04:55] Come to me.
[00:04:57] Seems simple, but it's a step that says, I'm coming to the one who's going to lead me.
[00:05:07] I'm coming to the one who will disciple me. Come to me.
[00:05:13] Not come to church, not come to life group, not even come to the pastor. We all right, but come to me. Jesus says, come to me, Jesus. Invitation is that before we do anything to do the work of the disciple.
[00:05:34] He says, I want relationship with you.
[00:05:38] At the heart of discipleship is relationship with Jesus. Jesus is saying, come to me.
[00:05:46] I don't know if any of you have watched the Chosen, but there's an amazing episode where Jesus interacts with the children. He's out camping, and he's got his tent set up, and he's got the fire, and he's working away. And these children kind of gather around the perimeter of his camp, kind of looking in, and he starts speaking to them as though he knows they're there, but he wonders if they're there. And just this beautiful interaction, and these children just find their way into his presence, and he invites them in.
[00:06:20] Another invitation. In the Gospels, Jesus says, let the little children come to me.
[00:06:26] This is what discipleship is, friends.
[00:06:30] The Father saying, come, children, come to me. He's not a distant father that has to. We have to prove something to.
[00:06:41] He's a father that says, just come to me. Come to me with your burden. Come to me with your mess. Come to me with all your questions. Anyone got questions for God?
[00:06:53] I've got questions for God. I've got questions that may not even be answered in this lifetime.
[00:07:00] But he says, come to me. Come to me if you're burned out. Come to me if you're carrying a heavy burden. Other versions say, come to me if you are burnt out on religion, if you're doing, doing, doing, doing, but you're not being in his presence, then we're missing it. Jesus invitation is, would you come?
[00:07:28] Do we understand what it means to be a disciple of Jesus? Well, as we read in chapter 10, so the preceding chapter, before we get to this part, Jesus is giving this invitation to the Jewish people because he sent his just recently commissioned disciples out into the Jewish cities.
[00:07:47] And he's saying, go and preach. He says, but he forbid them to preach to the Gentiles at that point. He said, I want to speak to the Jewish people about what they need to know and understand.
[00:08:01] Was Jesus saying, you need to understand what it means to be a disciple.
[00:08:06] And here's what it looks like.
[00:08:09] Do we understand what it means to be a follower of Jesus, to be discipled by him?
[00:08:17] Because we get a little bit of context in the 12th chapter when Jesus and the disciples are walking on the Sabbath through a grain field and the, the disciples are hungry, so they take some grain and they eat it. The Pharisees are like, you can't do that. You can't do that. The rules say the law says you can't.
[00:08:37] And then Jesus goes into the synagogue and there's a man with a withered hand.
[00:08:42] And so Jesus, the compassion he has for this man says, well, be healed. And the man's hand is healed. Rather than celebrating what Jesus has just done, they go, hold on, you've broken the rules. You've broken the rules.
[00:08:58] How many rule keepers do we have in the house? Come on, be honest. You're allowed to be honest. Nothing wrong with being a rule keeper. But if our rule keeping stops us from having a relationship, then I think we've missed the point.
[00:09:13] I wonder whether Jesus was giving the invitation with a little provocation.
[00:09:19] Didn't he do that well? Didn't he do that well? Where he says, come for those that are listening, those who have ears to hear, listen, and those that just couldn't see it, couldn't hear. It they were, but I've got to do more.
[00:09:35] If your understanding of faith in Christ is that there's a bunch of rules you have to follow in order to get close to God, then you've missed the heart of discipleship.
[00:09:49] Jesus says, come to me.
[00:09:53] Come to me. There's an invitation.
[00:09:56] I've been a Christian for almost 45 years. I was about three years old.
[00:10:01] You worked out my age? Getting close to 48. I'm closer to 50 than ever before. Loving getting older. How many people are enjoying getting older?
[00:10:11] I'm not enjoying the body breaking down as that happens, but I love growing older. And don't ever be afraid of that. There was a word that came in this morning that someone's afraid of being 50. Don't be afraid of 50. Come on, thrive at 50. Come alive at 50. Make the most of what God's got for you in this season.
[00:10:36] But I've met thousands of Christians over the last 45 years. I've been in churches of 20, 30 people to churches of thousands of people. Been involved in mini crusades and ministries and lead ministries and led churches.
[00:10:52] And you know a common, a common answer. When I say, hey, how are you doing? It's the common question you ask someone, right? Do you know what the most common response I hear?
[00:11:07] Good. I'm really starts with B. Busy.
[00:11:13] I'm really busy. I'm really busy. How many people are busy?
[00:11:21] You know what Jesus promises, so there's an invitation come.
[00:11:26] But he has a promise with that invitation. He says, I will give you rest.
[00:11:35] How many people are struggling to know how to rest?
[00:11:41] Yeah.
[00:11:42] How many people have got about 57,000 things on your to do list that even you've already been thinking about these because you're bored with my message.
[00:11:56] All right, a bit of honesty. Thank you, Duncan. I appreciate that.
[00:12:02] Come on. Some of you are already thinking about what herbs and spices are going on the roast.
[00:12:10] You're thinking about your week next week, and you're realizing you don't have enough hours in the day to get everything done.
[00:12:17] Trying to work out how you can move that meeting to that time frame so that you can get to that meeting. And then if you drive fast enough within the speed limit, you might be able to get, oh, shakamaha.
[00:12:33] But we're busy.
[00:12:35] We're so busy.
[00:12:37] Let me ask a question. Have we learned how to rest?
[00:12:44] Oh, I can't rest. That would mean I'm being lazy. Nope, that's not what it means.
[00:12:52] God created Adam and Eve. The first day he spent with Them was what? The Sabbath.
[00:12:59] They rested, they worshiped, they were there with God.
[00:13:07] We're going to learn to be ministering out of a place of rest. Jesus says, come to me, I will give you rest.
[00:13:19] That rest is supernatural, but I'm not talking about binge watching Netflix on that series that you want to watch. I'm not talking about rest that we would call leisure.
[00:13:34] Talking about rest, that is worship, that is closeness with God.
[00:13:42] Because when we are in that place, when we find ourselves in that place of rest, the list of all the things we've got to do, it's still there.
[00:13:55] But that list gets a brand new perspective.
[00:13:59] Because what matters most of all is that we are with Jesus and everything flows out of that.
[00:14:09] Many of us learning how to rest means that we have to start saying no to some really good things.
[00:14:19] I don't know about you, but I have lots of opportunities to do good things with great people.
[00:14:25] But sometimes I have to say no.
[00:14:29] We say no to Wednesday evening invitations because that's our family discipleship night.
[00:14:39] So in our household, that's our space, that's our time.
[00:14:46] That's one night in the week. I can't do other things, but I don't want to do other things because that matters to me. And I got to be honest, we haven't done that well.
[00:14:56] There have been seasons of chased after everyone and everything and done all of these things. And I've missed the most important thing, which is discipling my own family.
[00:15:05] But no guilt, no condemnation, but a conviction that says, you know what? I'm going to prioritize the things that matter to God and matter to me.
[00:15:17] Are we weary? Are we carrying a burden? Do you have expectations that others, and probably more importantly yourself, have placed on yourself?
[00:15:28] Sometimes we think it's others putting expectations on us, but actually I think it's ourselves.
[00:15:34] Maybe the expectations we think people are putting on us is actually us not wanting to let people down.
[00:15:41] Any other people pleasers in the house?
[00:15:45] You want people to like you, right? I don't think many people go out of their way to have people hate them. I don't think so. Maybe some of you do, but I don't think so. I think most of us like people to like us, right?
[00:16:01] And so therefore we want to do what they ask us to do. We want to be there for them.
[00:16:08] But can we find that place of rest? Can we do all of that out of a place of rest?
[00:16:14] When Jesus spoke this word, his audience would likely have been Pharisees, teachers of the law, as well as his own disciples. And Jesus wasn't saying, don't work hard.
[00:16:26] We've just done a series, Love Mondays.
[00:16:30] Drew preached an incredible message. Thank God it's Monday.
[00:16:35] Work is given to us as a gift.
[00:16:38] But if we can flip the understanding of what work is and we go from a place of rest into work rather than the other way around, we will find.
[00:16:54] We find we can minister with a greater strength.
[00:17:00] Jesus is saying, lead, live, love, minister from a place of rest.
[00:17:06] Jesus is saying, I know how to do it and I'll show you.
[00:17:10] I love that Jesus worked hard. You look at some of the days of ministry where he, from morning to night, be ministering right through until the sun goes down.
[00:17:23] But then the Gospels record, early the next morning, Jesus got away to pray.
[00:17:31] What does that place with Jesus look like?
[00:17:35] It's different. Some of us are active listeners and learners. And you want to go for a walk with Jesus. Good. Others, you love getting your journal out and writing. And there's no prescription as to how you come to Jesus and you're with him, but it must be intentional.
[00:17:59] We're offered his daily bread.
[00:18:02] There's a clue in that. It's every day. I don't know about you, but I like to eat more than once a week.
[00:18:09] So if you come to church thinking you're going to get fed on a Sunday to last you through the week, ain't happening.
[00:18:18] It's a daily invitation to come. Not come to me on Sundays, but in the morning when we take our first breath. Well, we're breathing right through the night. But when we take our first woken breath, we. What's it fill with?
[00:18:36] Hi, Jesus.
[00:18:39] How would you greet him in the morning?
[00:18:41] Thank you, Jesus. There isn't a ring around my body to say I'm dead. I'm alive. Praise the Lord. Thank you, Jesus. Good morning, Jesus.
[00:18:53] I want to come to you today and I want to receive that invitation.
[00:19:01] Then Jesus gives a second invitation. He says, take my yoke upon you.
[00:19:07] He says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you.
[00:19:17] He invites us to connect ourselves to him.
[00:19:21] Now, when we hear the term yoke, a yoke was used to fasten two oxen or mules together. And they would put plow or they would carry a heavy load together.
[00:19:35] People have done studies and two oxen yoked together. So one by itself would only pull a certain amount and another by itself would pull a certain amount. But two together exponentially could pull, I think one and a half or two times more than they would as individuals.
[00:19:53] The power of working together.
[00:19:56] But I wonder whether when they heard Jesus say, take my yoke upon you, I wonder whether their thought was, is that the yoke of slavery, that burden? Because throughout Scripture, there was a yoke, the Babylonians. It was described as an iron yoke that was held upon the Israelite people.
[00:20:18] And so the bondage of the yoke was probably in their mind. And Jesus says, take my yoke upon you. They say, no, I don't want that.
[00:20:26] And in all honesty, they've been sitting under the yoke of the law.
[00:20:31] That burden that was, if I step one step too many, I've broken the Sabbath law because I can only take so many steps on the Sabbath.
[00:20:42] They weren't walking and living in freedom. They were under this oppression. And Jesus says, I've got a new yoke for you.
[00:20:51] Now, I've shared this before, but Jesus is a carpenter.
[00:20:55] I wonder if it was. Jesus yokes the best yokes in town.
[00:21:01] I mean, he would have made great yokes. He was a carpenter, right?
[00:21:06] And he's got a yoke that fits DEZ absolutely perfectly.
[00:21:12] A yoke that fits Esau perfectly. Terry, he's got a yoke for your shoulders.
[00:21:20] A yoke that fits, right? And it's connected.
[00:21:27] Learn from me.
[00:21:29] That, my friends, is discipleship.
[00:21:33] Learning from Jesus, learning from the Master. We're called to be disciples of Christ, and we yoke ourselves to him and we learn from. From Him.
[00:21:45] And he gives us a couple of ways that he's going to do it, too. And interesting. On our APIs night, we talked about Ephesians, Chapter 4, which talks about gentleness and humility as a part of the goal to find unity, which then releases the gifts or the grace of the APS ministry.
[00:22:06] But Jesus says, take the yoke I give you, put it on your shoulders and learn from me, for I am gentle, humble.
[00:22:15] Gentleness and humility.
[00:22:20] It's not something that people get excited about in the world, is it?
[00:22:24] We think humility is weakness.
[00:22:28] We don't want gentleness. We want strength and power, right?
[00:22:32] But Jesus says, learn from me, for I am humble and gentle.
[00:22:40] A few weeks ago, we were lying on the lounge floor on one of our family nights, and we were unpacking the Scripture together.
[00:22:46] We were talking about, what is the burden that you're carrying?
[00:22:50] What's the thing that just, you know, life's tough.
[00:22:54] Some of it was stress. Internal. Interesting. In our family, we've got internal stresses and external stresses. I don't know who you've got in your home, but some that bottle in or you bottle up, and the others just blow out.
[00:23:08] So in our home, we had some that blow out and others that bottle up. But it felt like a burden.
[00:23:17] We had relationships that weren't going like we hoped they would, so we're talking about those as burdens. And I said, well, what if we approached all of these things with humility and gentleness?
[00:23:33] It was like an aha moment for all of us that actually, when I go into a difficult conversation with humility and gentleness, when I consider the struggles or the stress or the anxiety that I'm feeling with humility and gentleness, what a change that can have in our relationships. Jesus says, I'll teach you to learn from me, you know, Last week we made our fifth move in eight months.
[00:24:07] Boxes. You know, the greatest feeling in the last week has been taking an empty box, slicing the bottom bit of tape, laying it flat, and going done in Jesus name.
[00:24:20] That box is no longer being used. Honestly, five different places in eight months. And we're so thankful for the journey, Truly we are.
[00:24:30] But we're home. It's like we're home. We're finally home here in Exeter, finally.
[00:24:39] And it feels so good.
[00:24:42] But it didn't feel so good in the moving.
[00:24:45] I think I've climbed the Empire State's building in steps probably four or five times. I think up and down the stairs, getting boxes up. And I can tell you I am so thankful that I didn't have to move on my own throughout those five moves. We've had people help us at different times, but the last move, we had a couple of beasts. Now, I'm not talking the beast from Revelation.
[00:25:14] I'm talking about beasts like, the sun's out, gun's out, these guys are strong. Tim and Ken come and give me a hand. And legend has it that Tim just kind of loads a sofa onto his shoulders and just walks up 17 flights of stairs.
[00:25:31] The legend gets bigger and bigger, but there are a couple of times where we're lifting a piece of furniture up and around those narrow stairwells, and I got my hand on the piece of furniture, but I'm not feeling there's a whole lot of weight, if I'm really honest. Like, the furniture is going up the stairs, but I could probably just step back and do this, you know, that's the picture I have. When Jesus says, come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you When I yoke myself to Jesus, he is my heavy lifter. It's like every burden that I feel like I've got to bear on my own, he is the.
[00:26:16] The chief oxen, so to speak. He is the one that has all the strength, has all the knowledge, all the wisdom, all the power. And if I simply yoke myself to him, we find ourselves moving so much further forward.
[00:26:30] The trouble is sometimes we're like the young ox going, I want to go left, but the mature ox says, we're going straight through this.
[00:26:42] Jesus is giving an invitation, stay connected.
[00:26:47] And I think that invitation is daily. Do you know how quickly we can disconnect from Jesus?
[00:26:55] About that Quickly, right? Some of you, you were gone like 30 seconds ago.
[00:27:02] But as quickly as we can disconnect, we can also reconnect.
[00:27:08] I've had a saying that I've used for 20 years. We're only ever one prayer away from being right with Jesus. Just one, one heartfelt prayer that says, jesus, I've strayed, Jesus, I took your yoke off and I put my own one and I burdened myself. Jesus, forgive me.
[00:27:27] I want to connect to your yoke again.
[00:27:30] Friends, have you taken the yoke off?
[00:27:34] Have you unhitched yourself from Jesus?
[00:27:37] Have you found yourself carrying that heavy burden on your own again? Jesus is saying, you don't have to just yoke yourself to me.
[00:27:51] Are you still trying to carry your family? I'm a father. I care so much about my kids and my wife. I do.
[00:27:59] But I do it. Yoked to Jesus.
[00:28:03] Come on, businesses. How many people would like to see a little bit more money coming in and not so many expenses going out in your business, but do it. Remaining yoked to Jesus in your friendships and your relationships. Come on, students, those exams don't write themselves, do they?
[00:28:21] Maybe chatgpt?
[00:28:25] No, none of you. I doubt it.
[00:28:29] But are we yoked to Jesus in our study?
[00:28:32] Are we so connected to him that even when we open the books and we begin to study, we sense his leading and his guiding?
[00:28:41] So Rosie, our oldest, is doing GCSE and she's had to catch up on basically three years of knowledge she has never learned.
[00:28:50] So the school system in New Zealand is very different to the uk.
[00:28:55] So she's come in and she has worked hard, like so hard, and she's going through her mocks at the moment. She's got one more day of mocks to go and she has done so well, so well.
[00:29:08] And as we approach these exams, I said, have you, have you worked hard? Have you Studied. Have you been diligent in your work? She says, yes. I said, have you learned everything that you think you're supposed to know? She says, no, I just have no idea. There's so much stuff that was covered years, the previous few years.
[00:29:30] I said, well, why don't we invite Jesus into your study?
[00:29:35] That even as you begin to study that you would just get a sense that these are the things you have to study.
[00:29:42] I said, because you're at a bit of a disadvantage.
[00:29:45] So she does. She goes into her room and she gets before Jesus and says, what do I need to focus on? Lo and behold, as she approaches the exams, those things that she felt and she studied and she worked hard, they're in the exam. It's like, how amazing is that?
[00:30:09] Now, I'm not suggesting that you don't do any study and hard work and then you ask Jesus for the answers to the test. It doesn't quite work that way.
[00:30:17] But there's situations in your work where you've worked hard, you've been diligent, you've been so faithful, and you just get to a point where you don't have enough.
[00:30:26] You're not sure whether you've got the wisdom. You don't know whether you've got what it takes to climb that next hurdle.
[00:30:35] Invite Jesus, stay connected to him, ask for wisdom. If any of us are lacking wisdom, he gives it to us freely.
[00:30:47] The last seven, eight months since we've been here as a family, we've been trying to connect to Jesus. We do it every day as a family. We do a little thing called a prayer chair.
[00:30:59] It's nothing sensational, but it's something that connects us to each other and connects us to God. So before the kids go off in their different directions to school, we gather at the bottom of the stairs, we put our hands in the middle, say a quick prayer. Sometimes we do a prayer, go round where we pray for each other. Or maybe one person just prays over our day, say, jesus, we need your help today.
[00:31:22] Then we do whatever it is. Ace those exams on three. One, two, three. Ace those exams.
[00:31:28] It's just that little something that connects us to God and connects us to each other. Find something within your rhythm to do that.
[00:31:38] As the worship team come, there are also difficult moments in the last seven months where there have been tears in our eyes as we were stepping into the day. And that was just dad crying as we're wondering whether our kids would be able to make new friends and connect and work their way into this culture.
[00:32:02] But we invited Jesus into that journey, but then there's some days where I didn't, and I wish I had.
[00:32:12] And then I remember the next day and I invite him again. Friends, there is no guilt, there is no condemnation in Christ Jesus, but there's an invitation. He's saying, come. Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy laden. The promise is, I will give you rest.
[00:32:29] Take my yoke upon me on you. Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble. And I will give you. This is the second promise, rest for your soul.
[00:32:41] So Jesus will give us rest. He'll teach us rest. But there's something deeper that I think there's a battle going on for in today's society.
[00:32:52] We've got a challenge in this generation, we've got a challenge because the devil is waging war on our souls and there is such a grabbing of our attention that we're struggling to know how to rest.
[00:33:16] I think sometimes we struggle just to sit in his presence.
[00:33:23] We're so used to being filled with noise, so much information available to us, more information than our brains can. Can cope with.
[00:33:40] There's a battle going on for our souls, keep us busy, something else to do, something else to watch, something else to listen to.
[00:33:56] I think Jesus just wants us to sit with him a little bit and learn to be at rest with Him.
[00:34:09] I was talking with one of the parents at Josiah's football yesterday, talking phones, talking digital devices.
[00:34:18] And I said, how's that going with your family?
[00:34:24] They're addicted to it. They're absolutely addicted to their devices. I think discipleship's happening through our devices with a generation.
[00:34:32] We're not being discipled by Jesus, we're being discipled by our devices. And I get it, as a parent, we have done that too many times. It's like we've got to cook dinner. Can we watch TV yet? Go for it? Can we get on our devices? We've got to continually rein that back in and have those conversations.
[00:34:53] But I said, what happens when you take your phone off your child? He said, oh, I wouldn't dare do that.
[00:35:02] I said, why? What would happen?
[00:35:05] Just go crazy.
[00:35:07] I said, let me ask you a question.
[00:35:09] How much do they pay for their bill for the mobile phone?
[00:35:14] They said, they don't pay anything. I said, that's your phone.
[00:35:18] That's not their phone, that's your phone.
[00:35:22] But I wonder whether we've got a generation of younger ones, and probably my generation and younger who grew up with the digital age.
[00:35:33] I'm in a generation called the exennial. Generation.
[00:35:37] So I'm in between an analog childhood and a digital adulthood. So Internet kind of came in. 93, 95. I was doing my last few years of study.
[00:35:49] I vowed that I would never get a cell phone. No way. It's for yuppies.
[00:35:54] Not getting one of those, wow, look at us now.
[00:36:02] But you know what? I think we got to give the gift of being bored back to our children.
[00:36:11] I'm bored. Wonderful.
[00:36:15] What incredible opportunity you have to go create something or learn something.
[00:36:24] But let's not just put it back on our children.
[00:36:28] Can I put my hand up and say, can I just sit with Jesus without having to fill my mind and my heart with something else?
[00:36:41] I hope you hear my heart today.
[00:36:44] Hope this isn't landing as a heavy yoke or a burden. I hope you're hearing this is an invitation from Jesus to say, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden.
[00:36:58] I will give you rest.
[00:37:01] He longs for us to be with him.
[00:37:09] Now, it might mean that we have to be a little bit ruthless.
[00:37:15] We might need to cut some things out of our weekly.
[00:37:20] I know. I've been seriously considering some of even the things that just coming into my world and my life.
[00:37:30] I'm not even talking bad things, but if we've got work emails pinging us 24 hours of the day, how could we possibly get rest?
[00:37:42] How could we possibly find that space that's uninterrupted? Maybe we need to set notifications on our phones, even where it's off for a period of the day.
[00:37:56] Let that problem solve itself because I'm with Jesus right now and I'll check back in with the world in a moment. But for now, I don't want to be interrupted.
[00:38:09] You just close your eyes in the presence of God this morning.
[00:38:19] Jesus, we love you.
[00:38:25] There's some days that probably my actions don't show that I love you as much as I say I do.
[00:38:36] Please forgive me when I've been so busy doing lots of things, but I haven't stopped to be with you, Jesus, I hear, I pray that every heart would hear your invitation today.
[00:38:58] Come, come to me.
[00:39:06] For everyone burdened, heavy laden, even burned out on religion, doing lots of good things for you. God, I pray we would come to you for that promise of rest, that we would take that yoke that you offer.
[00:39:28] Not a yoke of bondage, of slavery, but a yoke that would bring productivity.
[00:39:34] That when we yoke to you, we would step when you step, we would rest. When you rest, we would move where you move and when you move.
[00:39:47] Jesus, thank you for the invitation to come to you and to take your yoke upon us.
[00:39:56] Would we do that today?
[00:39:59] Not out of obligation or out of a religious expectation, but because we know that you love us and you long for us to experience that.
