Unburdened: The Secret to Letting God Carry the Things That Weigh You Down

by Chris Tiegreen

In his Word, God promises us freedom from worry. Wouldn’t it be nice if we actually believed him? What would happen if you took the concerns that grip you, that keep you awake at night, that clench your stomach in knots . . . and truly handed them over to his keeping? Like no other writer can do, best-selling author Chris Tiegreen opens your eyes and heart to a better, more weightless way to live. Unburdened won’t teach you how to avoid responsibility or hide from serious issues. Neither is it about how to escape and go live on a beach—though having a couple of palm trees around never hurts. It’s about taking the burdens you currently carry and making them much, much lighter. It’s about transferring the weight of your responsibilities from the weak shoulders of your flesh to the strong fingertips of God. It’s about learning to live in deep-down, heart-level freedom. And no one who reads Unburdened will walk away unchanged.

238 pages, Paperback

First published June 21, 2010

About the author

Chris Tiegreen is an award-winning author of more than 60 books and discussion guides that have been translated into more than 40 languages and read by more than 5 million people worldwide. He is also a collaborative/supporting writer on more than 40 book projects. As a journalist/photojournalist, he has written hundreds of magazine and newspaper articles covering city and county government, sports, and education. His experiences in media, ministry, and higher education bring a unique perspective to his writing, which often focuses on cultural commentary and devotional themes.

Reviews

[Terri Palermo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I haven't had a book touch my life like this since A Return to Love. I feel like I was knocked upside the head and I've finally woken up. It is time to stop paying lip service to God and trust in his Word and Promises.
For me, this will be a book that will always have a living place with me. My plan is to re-read this and use the footnotes and reference them as I read this again. And again...

Thank you, Amy.

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few weeks ago I received a copy of Unburdened: The Secret to Letting God Carry the Things That Weigh You Down by Chris Tiegreen. One of the reasons I really enjoy reviewing books for publishers is because it stretches me...I end up reading books I would probably never pick out myself. This is one of those books. I doubt it would have ever caught my eye if Tyndale hadn't sent it to me. I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy it, but I did. It's on a timely subject for today's typical overextended, harried parents.

The premise of the book is that, "the unburdened life is a calling to carry exactly what God places on our shoulders-nothing more, nothing less, nothing else-in the strength that he gives us." Through anecdotes, personal stories, and Scriptural examples, Tiegreen attempts to show us that rather than weighing ourselves down or the opposite extreme of totally avoiding burdens and responsibilities, we need to take our cares to the One who longs to carry them for us. A major source of inspiration for Tiegreen was Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, a book well worth reading itself.

The key, according to Tiegreen, is to shift our focus onto God and his Kingdom, to make him our "magnificent obsession":

"Anyone who has tried to eliminate worry and stress from his or her life by focusing on the worry and stress has fought a futile battle. It isn't enough to lay all our burdens down. That never works. It's a right and necessary start, but it isn't the whole picture. When we 'let go', we leave a void, and it's our nature to fill the vacuum with something...the answer is to replace what we've let go of with something else. Jesus tells us what the proper replacement is: a magnificent obsession with the Kingdom of God."

Focusing on God wholeheartedly puts everything else in it's proper place and aligns our priorities with his.

"When we're centered on God, we no longer obsess about our work, family, lifestyle, ambitions, finances, or image. We obsess about his name and let him take care of the rest. Worship is the overflow of the heart that has taken that stance. Its the proof in the pudding, so to speak-the evidence that we really are more concerned with his glory than with our own interests. It's a declaration that we have a higher purpose than ourselves. A funny thing happens when we place a higher priority on God's praises than on our own burdens. He takes up our interests as his own. He may reshape them and reprioritize them, but he begins to invest his resources in them...God seems to become more zealous about our desires when we've abandoned ourselves to his."

The real battle is not over successfully controlling the outcome of all our problems, but over our attitudes and perspectives towards them. Circumstances are not the battlefield, with joy following if the circumstances work out. Worship and joy are the battlefield. Often, circumstances will shift when our heart attitudes work out, though not always immediately or dramatically.

The book concludes with some great example prayers and the story of Jehoshaphat's victory-by-worship from 2 Chronicles 20, asserting that this story, along with other examples in Scripture discussed throughout the book, are meant to be applied to our lives. God's desire for his people is that we live fearlessly, faithfully, and freely, fully depending on him.

I really appreciated the engaging, conversational writing style and found Tiegreen's honesty and transparency about his own shortcomings refreshing. He powerfully illustrates what it means to trust God using the Psalms, which he calls our "field manual", and offers the book of Philippians as an example showing all the characteristics of an unburdened life...despite Paul's circumstances while writing it! Ch. 4 on Trust and Ch. 8 and 9 on Praise and Presence, along with the conclusion, were the best in the book, in my opinion. Overall, I found Unburdened an encouraging, worthy read.

(Thank you to Tyndale House Publishers for providing a complimentary copy of Unburdened for me to review. All opinions I've expressed are my own.)

[Greg Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chris Tiegreen is a very engaging writer who works for Walk thru the Bible. He is currently the editor for indeed magazine, which the Walk thru the Bible website describes a “deeper life” devotional. He as authored a series of one-year devotionals for Walk thru the Bible and four other books. He comes across as very honest and sincere, willing to share his personal struggles and shortcomings.

The major premise of this book is that we as believers can obtain a level of freedom that non-Christians cannot. Our burdens do not have to defeat us because we have God’s promises. “The unburdened life isn’t so much about avoiding burdens as it is about carrying them with the strength of Another” (p.12). We must “spend more time dwelling on how big God is than on how big our problems are” (p.34).

There is much good counsel in this book. Tiegreen encourages us to trust in God, to rely on his promises. He challenges us to draw strength from the Psalms, which “are more than historical information. They are case studies” (p. 75). He warns against being preoccupied with our own agendas and fears of the future. Good advice all, but I cannot recommend the book.

In his introduction he admits that the deeper life movement has influenced him. In particular he mentions three books; Let Go, Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret and Absolute Surrender. I was familiar with Hudson Taylor and Andrew Murray (Absolute Surrender) but not with Let Go, which was written by Francois Fenelon. Tiegreen refers to Fenelon as a “seventeenth-century French theologian” (p. 105). He was actually a Roman Catholic priest who advocated Quietism .

This influence shows up in the book. While discussing different types of trust in God he writes
“Another kind of trust involves believing God for something he has specifically promised us. When we’ve prayed a request and received a confirmation from him by faith – relevant and pointed Bible verses brought to our attention, a timely word in sermons or from other believers, outward signs that confirm God’s voice to us, the repeated whisper of his Spirit in our hearts, and any of the other ways he speaks...” (p. 87).

Later he gives a personal anecdote
“I had been weighed down by a huge prayer request for a very long time. I was convinced God had promised the answer I was asking for, but the answer lingered. And lingered. And lingered some more. Anyone who has waited on God to fulfill a promise can understanding the pain of waiting – and the questions that come with it. Did I hear him wrong? Have I been presumptuous? Am I believing him for something he never promised? Have I missed his answer somehow? Did I get disqualified by sinning or losing faith?” (p. 167)

The things that God has “specifically promised us” are in the Scriptures. They are objective truth. There is no need for subjective “confirmations.” The “other ways” God speaks are not whispers and signs, but the Word of Christ (Hebrews 1:1-2). The questions that he asks on p. 167 are the wrong questions. Did he hear God wrong? I don’t know, was what he heard from the pages of holy writ? Was he presumptuous? I don’t know, was this something promised in the Bible? Did he believe for something God never promised? Again, that depends, was it in the Scriptures?

In the endnotes, Tiegreen references over 175 Bible passages. I only wish he didn’t wonder off the sure-footed path of Scripture onto the slippery slope of subjectivism.

This book freely provided for review by Tyndale House Publishers and there was no expectation of a positive review.

Greg Wilson was raised in a Christian home and led to the Lord at a young age by his father. He has been in full-time Christian ministry since graduating from Midwestern Baptist College (Pontiac, MI) in 1981. He has been married to Sharon for over 27 years and they have two married daughters and a seventeen-year-old son. He has been the pastor of the Community Bible Church (Palmyra, PA) since 1998. His website is fromthebook.org

[Paula Phillips · Rating 4 out of 5]

How would you feel if all those worries, pains and problems that have been holding you back or that you are experiencing , went "poof" and disappeared forever ? How would your life be then, would you be able to go out and experience more and place all your worries with God ?
Author Chris Tiegreen brings together a good study guide to how to let God take care of your worries and let you live life with ease so that you may never again have to worry about those sleepless nights of tossing and turning , those horrible little anxious butterflies that flutter around in your tummy or those panic attacks that some of us including me work ourselves into a tiny state.
Unburdened is written in a way that everyone including non-christians can relate to with everyday examples to support his writings , one thing that I liked about Unburdened is that it teaches us not only to give God our worries but also how to cope with them and how to get rid of that chip growing on our shoulders.

"The only way to live an unburdened life -the one , take it or leave it, all or nothing way- is to actually let go of what we've been carrying and pick up a singular passion for God".

Not only does Chris Tiegreen's book show us the way of being unburdened and lightening on load but also in the same process how to have a stronger and build a relationship with God that filled with passion and the holy spirit blazing through you soul".

"It is one thing to say Jesus is living within us , but it is another to let Jesus live through us".

[Martha Little · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always pick a word each year to concentrate and meditate upon to help me grow in my Christian walk. This year’s word is unburdened. I was curious to see if there was a book with that title. When I searched online and found this book I thought perhaps I should read it. Wow, exactly what my mind, heart and soul needed! I loved it because it wasn’t filled with stories of overcomers so you felt guilty that you weren’t an overcomer, too. It said the struggle was real and it gently directed a person to see how taxing it is to continue to carry the burdens of this world instead of releasing them. My favorite quotation: “The unburdened life isn’t so much about avoiding burdens as it is about carrying them with the strength of Another.”

[Wendy Hines · Rating 3 out of 5]

Love the cover - it's how I feel many many times, as I am sure many of you do. Finances, security, responsibilities way heavy on a person. In Unburdened, Chris Tiegreen brings forth the word of God to let Him take your burdens or at least lift some of that weight. He writes in a language easy to understand, about the written Word and how it relates to everyday life. It's like talking to someone in the room, no one preaching or talking down to you which I really appreciated. I learned a few things and I plan on trying to relieve some of my burdens and let God handle them. If you feel overburdened, you might want to pick up a copy today!

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book left me with more work to do- more self-exploration and reflection. I was absolutely changed through the experience of reading, reflecting, and re-reading it. I almost feel silly removing it from my "currently reading" list. It could honestly stay there permanently, because I know I will keep coming back to it.

[Chee Keong · Rating 5 out of 5]

Matthew 11:30