Dealing With It

Life doesn't stop even when we're overwhelmed. Stress, anxiety, finances, relationships, we all have something we're dealing with, but God meets us in the middle of it with strength, peace, and hope. Because real faith doesn't ignore life's challenges. It helps us with dealing with it. Alright, so let me paint you a picture. It is five 30 in the morning and you have specifically chosen an alarm That does not sound like a siren, but apparently everything at five 30 in the morning sounds like a siren. And so you may hit that snooze button a few times, but eventually you realize I've gotta get up. There is a whole lot that I have to do. And so I get up and, and I've gotta figure out what the kids are eating for lunch, breakfast. Here's an uncrustable. I hope it thaws in time, like we're just getting through the morning. And after I get all of that settled in, I brace myself because I'm about to enter a war zone when I open that door to get those children up. Some days it is bliss, but nine times out of 10, it is World War iii. And as soon as I open the door, I know today is a battle day. These children have got it out for me. And so through tears and screaming and, and fits of rage, that 13-year-old finally gets outta bed or 3-year-old, they all act the same. But I finally get them situated and get them in the car. And I finally just boot them out the door, let the school deal with you. And I get into my car and I head to work and I sit in this traffic and it drives me crazy every single day. And that's not even the worst part because the sun is coming up and it's beaming in my face as I drive through this traffic. It's driving me nuts. The express lane is shut down this morning. So I'm just sitting here waiting. Finally, I pull into the parking lot at work and I will spend the next eight hours dealing with somebody else's problems that all of a sudden have become my problem. And when I finally get off work and I'm exhausted, I get back in the car and I begin to drive home once again in the traffic, once again with the sun beaming in my face. But I get the kids. 'cause I realize my night isn't over. I don't even know what day it is. Do we have practice? Is there something to do? I freestyle some dinner and I throw it together. And finally after the night has wound down, I get those kids in bed, I clean everything up. Oh, thank God there's a moment just for me. I've got a show that I really wanna watch. I've gotta catch up on a few things. Oh, great, it's already 10 o'clock. If I don't get in bed tomorrow, I'm gonna suffer for it. And so I lay my head down and as I close my eyes, I'm thinking I'm carrying way too much, but I can't stop. What am I gonna do? Just throw in the towel. I've got kids to feed. I've got bills to pay. I've got life to live. There's so much going on. I'm carrying too much, but I can't stop. So I've gotta keep going forward. And now maybe your details look a little different, but the sense is the same. That feeling still resonates with you. There's too much on my plate and something's gotta give. I've gotta take some sort of step. If that's you, we're gonna be addressing that this series. And I want you to hear this. You're not alone. You're not alone. Even if that's just your everyday life. What about all the other things that are being added on and put on our plate when, when suddenly we've got a big medical bill that came up when all of a sudden, uh, we lost a family member. When the kids are having trouble at school, when the weight of the world begins to pile on our shoulders today we're starting a series called Dealing With It. And and that's what we wanna do. We're talking to those of you out there who realize that you have way too much going on. It's way too hard. But we can't stop. We have to deal with it. We have to do something about it. Throughout this, this series, we want to get really practical and we wanna walk through these steps that all of us can take to really find some sort of relief and all of the chaos that surround our life. If we haven't had a chance to meet, my name is Tim. Uh, I'm the campus pastor at our Bedford campus. And if you're joining us at one of our campuses or online, thank you so much for being here. We are, uh, really trying to help you take steps. And so please look at for that listening guy that you can use to follow along with today's message. And a great tool that you can also use is that connection card. Please fill that out because maybe you have questions about today's message. Maybe you're needing somebody to walk with you or, or you just are ready to take that next step in your faith. Fill that out. We wanna touch base with you this week and help walk with you and take those steps. But today we're gonna be looking at a passage of scripture in, in the book of second Corinthians. And we, we see here where, where Paul is really as a pillar of faith, still inviting the Corinthian church that he has trained and led into some of the challenges and struggles that he is facing. If you wanna read along with me, I'm gonna start here in chapter one, verse eight. We do not want you to be uninformed brothers and sisters about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death, but this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead and he has delivered us from such a deadly peril and he will deliver us again on him. We have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted to us an answer to the prayers of many. I love this because Paul is being so authentic and sincere here. And and let's be honest, he's not talking about just a busy schedule and difficult kids and World War II mornings. He, he's talking about people want him dead. They're after his life. And not only are they pursuing him, but he's already been beaten and he's already been jailed and he's been ran out of town time and time again for the sake of sharing the good news of what Jesus did in his life and what he can do in ours. But he finally comes to this point and he said, the pressure is so great. It's far beyond my ability to endure it. I can't do it alone anymore. And I know we're not living with that same kind of pressure. But what Paul is describing here, it is similar to what we face. See, he's describing this situation that when the weight of life and all that we have to carry exceeds the strength and the ability that we have to carry it, it's a different cause. But it's the same feeling. It may be a different source of pressure, but it still leads us to the same breaking point. And Paul had all this pressure from the outside. And maybe for you, you have a ton of pressure that's coming from the inside, expectations that I need to live up to goals and aspirations and things I wanna achieve. But it's all becoming just way too much. And the result's the same. I'm carrying too much, but I can't stop. I gotta keep going. But right there in that moment, Paul discovered something powerful. He says, all of this happened so that I might not rely on myself, but I might rely on God. And he realized that all that pressure had a purpose, that all that pressure was building up to something that would be good for him. And so as we talk about these mounting pressures and the heaviness of our life today, here's where I want to caution you. First of all, we're not comparing what we're dealing with to what Paul was dealing with. Please don't hear what I'm saying and look around the room and say, well, but they're carrying way more. Or maybe it's the opposite for you. Don't look around the room and go, yeah, they need to hear this. Let's focus in on what we're carrying and what we are dealing with. We're all different, we all carry things differently. But ultimately, as we walk and that pressure mounts and it becomes too much for us to carry, the answer is still the same. So what do we do when life gets heavy throughout this series? We're, we're gonna help give you a framework for some of these questions. And we're gonna really talk about what do I need to do? What do I need to invite other people into to help me with? And then what do I need to give to God and let him handle? And so let's start with us. What we need to do is stop wearing our busyness. Like it's this badge of honor. Like it's something to be proud of. And our culture really glorifies being really, really busy. And I am so guilty of this. I mean, it's it's Sunday morning every, every week. Hey, how you doing, man? I'm good. How was your week? So busy. I am so busy, man. I I, I don't even know what happened last week. I've got so much on my plate and, and we, and we end up puffing ourselves up with all the things that we have to do. In fact, I found myself when I'm not busy feeling guilty, like, like I don't want to tell somebody that I've got bandwidth in my life 'cause it feels like there's something wrong there. But we've gotta stop carrying that for my wife and I, uh, busyness has become just normal life now. We've got, we've got two kids, one of them's three, and the other one's one. And frankly, I don't know what we did with all of our time before these two little time suckers came in and just dominated our world. But they take every waking minute and we count down the clock until they're safely asleep so that we can handle all the other chaos. But we were married for 13 years before we ever had kids. And so we'd settled into this rhythm of, of being like, what do we even do with our time when the hardest decisions we had to make were what do we eat tonight and what show are we going to watch? And that became a pretty big argument, if I'm honest. But as I look back and I started to think about what I did, you know what I realized? I still was so busy back then. It was a lot of silly things. In fact, one time I signed up for a bowling league and I'm not a bowler guys, I don't have the, the, the skill or the arm for it. But I signed up for this bowling league and I was gonna hang out and do this. What I didn't realize, 36 weeks long is this bowling week, 36 weeks in a row, they start you in September and they dismiss you at May. It was unbelievable. I did the math. That's like 67% of my year that I spent bowling suffering with cramping arms. Why? Why did I feel this urge to just fill my time? It's because we believe the lie that when we're busy, we're effective. And here's the problem. Busy most of the time just distracts us from what really matters. Busy. It does not mean better. Busy isn't always effective. And we have to realize that our goal isn't to be busy. Our goal is to be present. Our goal is to chase after the purpose that God has called us to. And so I wanna get practical for a minute here. I wanna talk about how we can actually start to analyze our life. And we really need to do a time budget. We need to take some time and sit down and know what some of you're thinking. I do not have time to look at my time, but bear with me here. Take a step back and let's see how we spend our time. But before we do that, I wanna encourage you, make a list of the things that you think are important to you, the goals that you have, the things that you're seeking after the things that you would say, these are the most important things in my life. These are my priorities. And then take a look at your time. Does your timeline up with what you say your priorities are? 'cause I think for some of us we'd say, yeah, God's my number one. But in my story, I, I didn't have any time for God. And yet somehow I, I pulled up my screen time app and I definitely had time for, for social media and, and all the other games on my phone. Maybe for some of us, our our, our biggest priority is that we want our kids to have a foundation. We want them to be in church. We wanna be surrounded by, by other believers that we wanna walk with life together. But then when we look at our time, what do we realize? Actually, I want my kids to be really good ball players. Or maybe one day they're gonna be awesome at that tuba that they play and there's nothing wrong with those things. But, but when we allow all the other stuff in life to creep in and dominate our priorities, we miss out. I think a lot of us, we wanna spend time with family. I, I know for me that this is what everybody told me. They said, the days are so long, but the years go by so fast. So slow down and spend time. And, and a lot of times I look at my, my time and I realize that we're just running from one thing to the next and we're going everywhere. I want you to hear this. It's okay to cut things. It's okay to say no, it's okay not to sign up for something new. At the end of the day, we are not measured by how much we do. We're measured by whether we live to the purpose that God called us to. So please don't keep suffering over something that you can just reduce. For some of you, the solution really is just to stop doing it. That's okay. If you need permission, you can slow down. You don't have to do everything. And when we begin to reflect on our time and when we begin to make those decisions and really wrestle with the things in our life that are so heavy that we asked for, once we start to sort through some of that, we also realize that there's still things that are really heavy and we have to allow others to come and walk in those things with us. So we need to invite trusted people to walk with us. And this is what I love about what Paul was doing here. He was inviting the church in Corinth into the struggle that he was having. And, and it wasn't so that he could get sympathy. He wasn't just calling them up and saying, Hey, commiserate with me. I want you guys to hear how awful my life is and how hard it is. He, he's not asking them for any fixes. He wasn't asking them to come and save the day. He just wanted their support. And he said as much, he said, you helped us so much by your prayer. And here's the thing guys, the reason that was so impactful is because we're not meant to do life alone. We're not meant just to deal with it, right? When we say deal with it, what do we mean? Suffer through it, wait it out. But dealing with it means actually putting a plan together, inviting people in to help us, making hard decisions that remove things off our plate. We gotta share our struggles with others, not so that they can come in and fix it. I, I've got friends that I, that I can pick up the phone and call and man, just, you gotta hear the day that I had today and just them hearing it and going, dang, somehow makes it better. I don't need advice all the time. I just need somebody to be there with me. The other side of that is that sometimes there's just other people in our life, they just see things clearer than we do when we're in the midst of it all and we just can't see clearly we need people that will say, Hey, have you thought about this? But those people that we let in, the key word here is trusted. We're we're not just inviting anybody in. We're we're inviting trusted people. These are people that we have relationships that, that love us when we're up and love us when we're down and, and, and walk through. I call these my, my friends with refrigerator rights. These, these are the people who come into my house and they don't need to ask for a cup of water. They know where the fridge is at. They know where the cabinet's at. These are the friends. I could strangle 'em, but they, they, they'll pour the last of my tea out and then have the audacity to put the jug back in the fridge. Like, wash your dishes, man. Make a new batch. What are you doing? But these are the people that I also know have got my back no matter what. That help me carry the load. And here's the thing, when you got a lot of people in your life that are helping you carry things, it makes it way, way easier. A couple weeks ago I was out at the bed build at at North Lake and it was an incredible time. Uh, it, it was so cool. And just under six hours, 400 beds were, were ready to go, built and ready to be shipped all across the state of Texas for kids that don't have a place to sleep. And as I had the opportunity to step back, I realized that, that this didn't rely on just one person. There were hundreds of people out there in each one with their role and each one with their job. And maybe one guy's the glue guy and the next guy's carrying boards and the other guy is, is screwing in the screws and drilling the holes. The coolest part was when the truck comes to pick some beds up, we've got a load of people who are able to help load that truck. You've heard the phrase, many hands make light work. And it's true. When you invite people in to walk with you, it makes life better and it makes life easier. And so as we begin to do that, here's what I promise you, you'll find some relief in getting some things off your plate, A lot of support in inviting people in. But you'll also find that life is still heavy. And in those moments that we've gotta quit trying to fix what God is calling us to surrender. And if you're anything like me, I will go to great lengths to maintain control over my situations. I'll do the hard thing so that I don't have to give it up to anybody else. Maybe somebody who's better at it than I am. But I'll do it my way because I want to keep it for me. But here's what Paul realized. This happened to me. This happened in my life, not so that I could be stronger, not so that I could gain new skills and talents or that I could learn something new. He said this all happened so that I would stop relying on myself and I would start relying on God. I rely on a God. He said, who can do anything? In fact, he said, we had the sentence of death put on us. And yet we realized that we follow of God who raises the dead. And so maybe you're carrying the whole world on your shoulders. Maybe it's your family and your friends and your challenges and your difficulties. And you go, wait a second. I'm carrying now this, but I have a God who carries the world in the palm of his hand. Surrender's not easy though, is it? I, uh, have a really hard time surrendering things. We have a tendency to hold on to things that, that really aren't ours to carry. My family and I were dealing with this right now. Uh, my grandfather, 84 years old, he, uh, he's really struggling with dementia and he has for the last several years and for the last few years, my grandmother also 84 years old, has stood by his side and taken care of him every step of the way. But what happens is that that weight begins to mount and it builds up. And we realized here recently that it is far beyond her ability to endure. It's just too much to carry. And so we had that really hard conversation where we all sat down to make the decision to sit him into a memory care facility. And I'll never forget the look in her eyes with tears coming down where she goes, but what about me? What am I gonna do? For 60 years, this has been my job to take care of him. This is all I've known to be by his side to be helping him. On top of that, how are we gonna pay for this? How are we gonna carry this? What, what are we gonna do? Sometimes we just feel like it's just so much easier to grip it and hold onto it. 'cause it's all we know. You gotta realize this. It's not giving up. It's handing it over and hear me when I say that. This is not giving up. It's just handing it over to the person, to the God who is supposed to be carrying it all along. And God can carry what we can't fix. And that doesn't mean we still don't have a role in, in it, but he's the one that carries the outcome. And so I wanna encourage you, invite God to do what only he can do. And please, please hear me when I say this. Your value doesn't come from all the things that you're carrying. It doesn't come from your role as a mom or a dad. It doesn't come from your ability to provide financially. It doesn't come from your ability to take care of someone and be there. That's not where our purpose, that's not where our value comes from. It comes from God. It comes from who we are in Jesus. And the promise is, is that when we walk in him and we do it his way, that all those other things fall into place. And even when we struggle it, it's his to carry. And so I don't know what you're carrying right now. Maybe it's just everyday life and the chaos that it comes with. Maybe it's all the finances that are piling up. Maybe you feel like your family's just being ripped apart. Maybe your kids are leaving home and you're left to go, what do I do? Maybe you don't even know where to start. Don't try to fix it. Surrender to God, what's his. So here's our next step. Identify something in your life that you've been carrying alone. Invite God into that. Invite a trusted friend to come and be a part of that struggle with you. Maybe that means for you, you're leaving today and you're calling that friend just to tell 'em about what you're going through. Just to say maybe for the first time out loud, this is really hard and I just need somebody to walk with me through it. Maybe for you. That's as we pray you. You're just writing that down and you're going, this is what I need to give you, God, because I can't carry it in anymore. Show me what you want. Here's what I know. Life is really hard. It's even harder without a savior. And so if you're here today and, and you've given your life to Jesus, but you're holding onto some things, you're carrying some things on your own, can I just implore you? Give them back to him. They're his to carry, walk in freedom with him. But maybe you're here and you haven't taken that step yet. The good news is, is that in all the weight and all the difficulty and all the failings, God already made a way and a plan to get us through it. And what he's outlined for us is a really simple path. He's told us this. Listen, just admit finally that we can't do it on our own, that I'll fail, that I'll mess up, that I just can't carry it, that it's far beyond my ability. Just admit that. But believe that he already sent Jesus to take care of all this stuff, to give us hope, to give us life, to give us a way where we could be in relationship with God, who can carry it all and then just commit to doing things His way to follow in Him, to putting aside our preference and our pride and following after him. And when we do that, it seems like surrender, but really is freedom. If that's you today, I wanna encourage you, mark that on your card. Let us know. We wanna follow up with you. We wanna talk with you this week. Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you so much for who you are and God, I I, I pray today that, that for everything we're dealing with, for everything we're carrying, that you would help us see so clearly that it's not ours to carry God. I pray that, that you would show us a really clear way of dealing with all this. Lord, I pray for those of us who love you and and will follow you to continually remember to give you everything and leave it there with you. I pray for those who will take that step today to give their life to you, Lord, that you would give them the confidence to step out in faith and trust you. And God, we know you're faithful. We know you're true. It's in your son's name we pray. Amen.