Take a moment and let’s read the words of Jesus from Matthew 11:28-30.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30 TNIV)
I’m here to tell you. I am TIRED! The month of April has wore me out! Anyone else here just plain tired right now?
When I about 12 years old I had a season pass to Wet ‘n Wild in Garland. I would ride my bike to the park and then spend the entire afternoon riding the rides and hanging out in the wave pool. Oh. I loved the wave pool! If you’ve never been to one of these water parks there is a large pool in the center of the park and every fifteen minutes or so a bell rings, kids go crazy, and everyone flocks to the pool to enjoy the waves. A giant machine pumps water into the big pool and causes these massive waves to build up and if I remember right these waves can get as high as 30-50feet (Don’t check that fact. Just trust me). The wave pool really is a ton of fun but it can also be really, really dangerous. One time I was in the wave pool and I was extremely tired. I decided I was going to climb out of the pool at the ladder but I slipped, fell into the high waves, and then struggled to stay above the water. The waves kept coming and pounding me and I was helpless to do anything. By the time it was over I felt bruised, beaten, and helpless. I was done with the water park.
The sheer power of the water and the constant beat-down I received from the waves drained me of all energy and stamina. I couldn’t take the constant pounding. I just wanted to quit. I was tired. I was used up. I was done.
Maybe that’s how some of you feel today as you sit here. April has been a difficult month for us all and some more than others.
- Stomach bug
- TAKS test
- Surgery
- Illness
- Accidents
- Emotional pain
- Allergies
- Death
This week I heard a seminar teacher challenge me with this thought. He said each week, someone in your community is In Trouble, Under Tension, or Going Through Transition. That pretty much sums up our problems doesn’t it?
This week, some of you were In Trouble. Your marriage is in trouble. Your kid is in trouble. Your job is in jeopardy. The credit card payment is due and you have no idea how you’re going to pay it. The brakes went out and there goes your bonus. Trouble is beating you down.
This week, some of you were Under Tension. (Joker- Dark Knight Score- The tension just keeps being ratcheted up as the film progresses) That relationship you’re in did not get better, in fact it is now worse. You were tested this week to compromise your integrity and your faith. You are under tension. Some of you in here are Under Tension with God. Your faith has taken so many hits you don’t know if God is even real. You are struggling to even care about your faith. You are living Under Tension.
This week, some of you are Going Through Transition. You are adding a family member. That means a new budget and a new schedule. You got promoted and demoted. Your teen started driving or got in a wreck this week- either way you’re transitioning into a new payment plan with your insurance agency. Life may be full of transition but transition/moving is tough.
Trouble, tension, and transition can be overwhelming. For some people the problems in life get too much to handle. People get depressed, apathetic, and despondent. Life becomes way too much to handle. When life becomes this hard we can relate to these words of Lamentations:
“Remember, LORD, what has happened to us; look, and see our disgrace.
Our inheritance has been turned over to strangers, our homes to foreigners.
We have become fatherless, our mothers are widows.
We must buy the water we drink; our wood can be had only at a price.
Those who pursue us are at our heels; we are weary and find no rest. (Lamentations 5:1-5 TNIV)
However, there is good news. Today’s message should not leave you feeling like Debbie Downer. Here is the Good News:
“What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then can condemn? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:31-39 TNIV)
Have you ever heard of the Tojinbo cliffs of Japan. These cliffs on the northern coast of the Sea of Japan are a formidable sight. Powerful winds and waves have pounded these shores and over time they have carved these ominous and treacherous cliffs.
Just looking at these cliffs you can almost imagine the sheer power and the drama that carved these cliffs can’t you.
The country of Japan has been faced with a suicide epidemic over the last few years. The suicide rate in Japan is more than twice that of the US. According to Time magazine, 1 in 5 Japanese men and women have contemplated suicide and 30,000 a year for the last 10 years have committed suicide. That is 300,000 people! In fact the article I read was from 2009 and that year from Jan to April, 11,236 people had committed suicide that year.
Many of those suicides happen at the Tojinbo cliffs. When the weight of the world comes crashing down on people they come to these cliffs to contemplate the end of their lives.
Maybe some of you have been in a similar place in life. The weight of the world seems like it is about to crush you and you just need some help, some relief.
Some of you know what it is like to stand at the cliffs of Tojinbo. You know what it is like to feel overwhelmed, lost, afraid, and alone. I think feeling alone and abandoned is the worst part of our pain. And Satan loves to exploit this. He’ll whisper to you that God doesn’t care. God can’t hear you. God has abandoned you. Satan loves to make you feel alone.
For years, the people who went to the cliffs of Tojinbo to end their lives were alone. However, since 2004, they have someone looking out for them. There is now someone who meets them at the cliffs, who counsels them, and who takes them in.
From TIME.com:
For five years, Yukio Shige, 65, has approached people at the cliffs’ edge with a simple “Hello” and a smile. He might ask how they came there and at what inn they were staying. Sometimes after a light touch to the shoulder, Shige says, they burst into tears, and he begins to console them. “You’ve had a hard time up until now,” he says, “haven’t you?”
The retired detective from nearby Fukui City has patrolled the cliffs two or three times a day since 2004, wearing white gloves and a floppy sun hat, carrying binoculars to focus on three spots on the cliffs where suicides are most common. After he’s talked them off the cliffs, Shige–a trained counselor–takes them to his small office, (for) counseling sessions. For men, Shige says, the biggest problems are debt and unemployment; most of the women are there because of depression or health issues. “If it’s a case of sexual harassment, I’ll go with her to the office and confront her boss,” says Shige. “If a child has issues with his father, I tell the parent that he is driving his child to suicide and get them to write a promise to change. They hang it on the wall.”
In April, on the fifth anniversary of starting his operation, Shige sat reading a three-page, handwritten letter he had received that day from a Shizuoka man, one of many he gets from those he has helped. The letter concluded by thanking Shige for providing the man with an awareness of the love that surrounded him. As Shige finished reading, the melody of “Amazing Grace” rose from his cell phone. “I want Tojinbo to be the most challenging place,” he says. “Not where life ends, but where it begins.”
Guess what? In your life today at your cliff of Tojinbo- whatever your feeling, whatever your trouble, whatever the pain- you have Yukio Shige and his name is Jesus Christ.
You see, Jesus himself has been to the cliff. In Genesis, we find the first prophecy ever concerning Jesus. God warns Satan about the coming King by saying that, Satan will bite his heel but that Jesus will crush his head. One of the Hebrew words for a cliff is SHE-en and it means Sharp as a Tooth. Jesus triumphs over the Sharp Teeth that try and destroy us.
Jesus left the throne room of heaven to become a man. He walked the earth and lived among us. He didn’t just speak to us from afar behind the pearly gates. He didn’t call out from behind the clouds, “I feel your pain!” No! He came to earth and he touched and healed the sick, the poor, the hurting. He knows what you’re going through because he knew suffering while on this earth. His family rejected him, his followers abandoned him, he was beaten and hung on a tree.
Jesus deals with the true source of our pain- Sin. One of my favorite parts of the article is when Shige deals with the source of the people’s pain. If the problem is the boss, he talks with the boss. If it is a family member, he talks to the family member. He goes straight to the source of the pain and the problem.
For us all pain and hurt and confusion come back to Sin and its effects. Sometimes the sin is committed against us and sometimes we suffer the consequences of our own sin. God was no satisfied with sin separating Him from us.
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2Corinthians 5:21 TNIV)
The Cross is where life begins. If you are struggling in your life right now with anything you are at a moment of challenge. How will you respond? Will you give up, abandon hope, abandon faith? Will you believe the lie that you are alone and that God wants nothing more to do with you? OR… Will you believe that through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ you have an advocate and a Savior more powerful than any problem in your life?
“We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.
Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:2-12 TNIV)
