The Light Yoke

This morning as I opened the little devotional book I've been using this year, I was struck by the entries for the next couple of days...Matthew 11:28 "Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." And Matthew 11:29 "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."

If only we could begin our lives knowing these promises are true. How much less burdened we would find ourselves.

We understand the obligations our world places upon us. We experience the losses, the demands, the difficulties of this life and we feel we must work our way through them...achieve...overcome....get over.

Being, at my core, a type A personality, I've tended all my life to think I could work my way to the top, fix whatever is broken, get over whatever was hurting me. How foolish that was. If I'd only understood these two passages.

Even in our walk with Jesus we put these 'yokes' upon ourselves. We see His demands to give our all to Him, to be like Him and we try so very hard to do so...knowing we cannot possibly meet that bar. And we can't....not by our efforts.

A 'yoke' sounds heavy and hard. HIS yoke is not. When we depend upon Him to guide us, the going is easier. The burden is lighter. He knows the way. He knows our path.

These past three years have been difficult in the extreme for me. You all know that. During the times when I tried the hardest to find answers, to make things better, to get over the grief, was when I was most heavily burdened and weary. It was during the times when I gave it to Jesus that my burden was lightened. I learned that I would never 'get over' my losing Bonnie. She will always be a part of my heart. But, by depending upon Jesus, I can get through this. Not by my strength, but by His.

There is a paragraph in my devotional that I want to share: "Dependence on Jesus is prerequisite for obedience. We cannot reverse the order without being crushed beneath the obligations of life and our attempts at self righteousness. We must be taught dependence first."

Of all the 'things' of this world for which we strive, none compare to the value of knowing our Christ as a teacher not a taskmaster. His yoke is a life-giving promise. When you carry His yoke and you trust in him to lead you and teach you is when your life changes for the better....forever.