Matthew 11:28-30 “ Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, 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.” This article talks about how we need to take the Lord's yoke upon our shoulders. It also talks about joy and how important praise is. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Take My Yoke Upon You
Matthew 11:28-30 “ Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, 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.”
This is not the verse I was planning to talk to you about today, but after the night I just had I am hoping that the Holy Spirit will talk to me as He talks to you tonight. I remember I heard a teaching on this verse once and they mentioned why farmers would use a yoke. A yoke is a wooden crosspiece that is fastened around the neck of two animals and then usually hooked to a plow or a cart. This yoke allows them to pull loads that they would not normally be able to pull on their own. I think I also remember the person explaining that a younger animal is usually paired with a more experienced animal. This way the more experienced animal can set the pace and teach the younger one. This seems to fit so perfectly with this verse.
The Lord is calling us, all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens. I don’t know about you, but this evening I am feeling pretty weary and my burdens are feeling pretty heavy. The Lord is calling us and it says He will give us rest. God is calling us to take up His yoke and to learn from Him. That is such a great visual for me. I got an image of this giant wooden yoke on the ground. I go up and put my head in it and the God puts His head in and my burdens are suddenly weightless. I wish it were that simple. I wish we could just hand God our troubles and then we felt this enormous weight off of our shoulders instantly. I think it can be this simple sometimes. I think we get in our own way sometimes. We want to hand our problems over to God and yet we also want to hold on to them. We don’t want to completely release them, because then we wouldn’t be in control anymore.
Have you heard of the expression, “Hitch your wagon to the right cart?” or “Don’t hitch your wagon to the wrong horse?” Both of these came to my mind when I started talking about what a yoke meant. I was thinking that if I had my choice of anyone to hook my yoke to, it would be the Lord. There is no one else that I would rather rely on and no one more powerful. I love the idea of taking His yoke and learning from Him. The Lord has so much to teach us. Even in this verse He says, “I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your soul.” How awesome would it be to find rest in your soul? Can you imagine what that would feel like? When I imagine rest in my soul I imagine a peace about all things in life. I imagine I am stress free and have no anxiety. I imagine I am filled with hope and joy.
I really feel as though the Holy Spirit is reminding me of Rick Warren’s definition of joy and wanting me to share it. I have talked about it before but right now I feel the Holy Spiriting telling me that I am not the only one that needs this refresher right now. Rick Warren’s definition of joy is as follows, “Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright and the determined choice to praise God in every situation.” Wow, yes, I did need to hear that tonight. For me tonight, this is a reminder that joy doesn’t mean I am always happy about everything. This to me means that it is ok that I am sad tonight about things going on and that doesn’t mean that the situation has taken away my joy. I do know that God is in control of all the details of my life. I am sure of it. I am grateful for it because He does a much better job than I could do.
When I think about it, truly think about it, I do have a quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright. Does that mean that I know how it is all going to turn out? No, no at all. Does that mean that I know when it will get better? Nope, I don’t know that either. However, I do know that eventually everything is going to be ok. Will it be exactly as I wish it would be, probably not. But that is ok, because God’s plan is better than my plan and His ways are higher than my ways. The last part of this definition is the part that we forget about a lot. It says, “the determined choice to praise God in every situation.” Wow, that is not something I always think of. Then, even when I do think of it, I don’t always want to do it. For instance, tonight was a rough night. Do I want to praise God for tonight? Not really? This is where I think we get confused. We think that praising God is about thanking Him for the situation we are in. There are many ways to praise God without thanking Him for the specific situation.
For instance, even though it was a rough night I am thankful that I have kids to argue with. Some people don’t and I realize that even when parenting them is difficult I am still blessed beyond measure that I have them. I am grateful to the Lord for giving me amazing friends. Friends that dropped everything they were doing to say a quick prayer just because I said I needed some. If it wasn’t for the argument tonight I wouldn’t have had the amazing gift of peace that I felt immediately after they prayed. That is something that I am not sure I have felt before. I have heard people say that I felt your prayers and I always thought that was nice, but didn’t truly understand what they meant until this evening. Not even 5 minutes after I asked my friends for prayers, this immediate sense of peace came over me. That is definitely something to praise the Lord for. We can also praise the Lord for being amazing. He does so much for us and even if we don’t want to praise Him for the current circumstances, we can praise Him for being awesome and for the amazing outcome that we know He is working on as we speak.
In all the books about miracles and faith, the authors always talk about how important praise is. I think this could be the secret ingredient that many of us are missing. How often do we praise the Lord? I mean truly spend time thanking the Lord for all He does and praise Him for being our almighty Lord and Savior? What if we all tried to praise Him more this week and see how much better our week goes? When you start to feel down, or get in a bad mood, think of 10 things you are grateful to God for. The bible verse Luke 16:10 came to mind just now. The verse says, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” If we appreciate what we have and praise the Lord for it, God will entrust us with more. What if the Lord is waiting for us to be grateful in our current circumstances before He moves us out of them? Can we spend just 5 minutes today praising the Lord? When I am finished with this episode I am going to listen to 5 minutes of praise and worship music. That is another great way to praise the Lord. If you can’t think of anything to say, you can always just listen to music. I have heard many people say that singing is praying twice. So if you feel as though you just don’t know what to say, sing a song, they have amazing songs out there that say all the things you want to say.
Remember, all of us who are weary and those of us carrying heavy burdens, come to the Lord and we will find rest. Take up His yoke and let Him help you carry your load. Wouldn’t it be so much easier if you weren’t the only one carrying it all? You are not alone. God is there, He is offering you His yoke, reach down and pick it up! Through the Lord we can find rest for our souls. Who’s soul could use a little rest? I know mine could. How about yours?
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask that bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord, the devil is having a heyday with our families and we ask that you intercede for us. We ask that you show us how to kick him our of our lives once and for all. Lord we ask for your protection over our families and give us the strength to keep fighting another day. Lord we love you so much, you are so very amazing!! You have given us all so much and we are so very grateful. Lord we ask that you fill us with your love peace and joy. I ask that you wrap your arms around each person listening to this today and give them a squeeze. Help them to feel your love a little extra this week Lord. I sense that I am not the only one that needs that this week Lord. We ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen.