1 Peter 5:5-6, Matthew 11:28-30, Galatians 6:1-10, James 1:5-8, Hebrews 4:16

So often the Bible refers to us as sheep. It is often said and I’ll say it here again sheep aren’t cargo animals. They’re actually fairly frail animals. They’re easily scared, they don’t pull plows, they basically spend their days following around the shepherd listening to what he has to say and doing it. Sheep don’t do a whole lot. Perhaps their number one practice is to learn to discern the voice of their shepherd and obey it properly.

We also don’t do well with loads that Jesus is intended to carry. Often times I hear people that say they’re overwhelmed or I see the fruit of that overwhelming in their lives. This may manifest itself in drinking too much, anxiety, irritability, depression… And the list goes on. These are all symptoms of what it looks like for a sheep to carry cargo; they’re overwhelmed. They’re doing something that’s not intended for their design.

I drive a Honda Civic. If I showed up at Lowes and put 50 bags of cement in my trunk and then tried to drive somewhere, my car would die. I would end up needing to call a friend with a truck, you know, something intended to haul things, and offload my burden. Our life with Christ is a similar thing. When he asks us to take his yoke upon us (Matthew 11), we are hitched to him. He is the strong one that pulls the majority of the weight, our part is to learn the wisdom that he shows us as we walk through the burden with him. As we learn this wisdom, we get the privilege to share it with our friends and help them carry their burden (Galatians 6).

Peter tells us (1 Peter 5) to cast our cares on God because he cares for us. The part before that contextually is the way to do that, be humble. What does humble mean? Humble means to be dependent. In the context of what we’re talking about here that means asking Jesus for help because something is eating your lunch. It may mean reaching out to friend for prayer. It may mean asking a friend for help.

The point here, it is very difficult to be productive for the kingdom when we walk around carrying burdens we were never intended to carry. If you are carrying something that is weighing you down, please have the humility to hand it over to Jesus. I can guarantee he will carry the issue either using his word and his spirit, his people, or a combination. Usually he uses people to meet physical needs and his word and his spirit to meet heart needs. We just have to be willing to admit we need help and then be willing to give him the burden.

At the end of the day, this boils down to us growing in grace and growing in our faith in Christ to shepherd us. It takes a good bit of trust to believe that Jesus is going to handle our issues. But the truth we always need to focus on is that he is the good shepherd. He cares more for us than most of us can even fathom.

Great faith is built little by little, not one great leap.