Trade Your Yoke

“Come unto me, all [ye] that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke [is] easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:28-30 AV)

What is often missed is the connection between the heavy load one carries and the load which the LORD asks us to assume.  Finding rest does not mean an absence of all burdens.  Rather, finding rest for the soul means swapping out the load we carry with the load which the LORD wants us to bear.  The load is mentioned.  The load is bearing under the responsibility or burden with the LORD has with meekness and humility.  How we bear the load will determine the easy of the burden.  Meekness and humility will make the load we bear much easier.  It also means we are relieved of the excess weights of a wrong spirit, fears and anxieties, or fighting against the burden which the LORD has determined.   The first three words are appealing to me.  Come unto Christ.  How many times do we seek to bear the burdens of life without drawing near to the LORD?  How many times do we bend under the load but not enough to reach our knees?  The LORD will give that which we can handle while relying on him.  Perhaps the load is heavier than it needs to be because we are not going to Him.

Something to note here is the association of the yoke.  The LORD refers to it as His yoke.  The word for ‘yoke’ here means a balance scale.  In other words, the yoke spoken of here is shared by two animals.  Therefore, the yoke spoken of here is not one pulled alone.  It is one shared.  The yoke Jesus asks us to carry is the same one He is pulling.  It is His yoke, first!  There is another important observation to be made here.  As two forces share a yoke, it is hard for them not to be familiar with each other.  It is natural for animals that share a common task, to form a social bond because of it.  Dogs that pull a sled form a social construct that enables the musher to organize them and create a structure, resulting in the sled moving forward as fast as it possibly can.  When the LORD asks us to share His yoke, not only does the yoke become lighter, but there is a bond that forms.  When He asks us to come unto Him, it is not solely for the purpose of making adversity easier to bear.  He asks us to come unto Him that we can learn of Him.  Not learn from Him.  Rather, to learn of Him.

Life has burdens.  Life has yokes.  What is interesting is for Jesus to ask us to take His yoke upon our shoulders necessarily means we are assuming a yoke we need to carry.  There is only one yoke here.  It is either the yoke we have chosen to bear, or the one Jesus is carrying.  We cannot carry both.  Coming to Christ means we relinquish the burden we carry and carry the one Christ has for us.  Circumstances don’t change.  What changes is the association with Christ we make and the spirit in which the burden is carried.  Humility and meekness of Christ are the keys that make our burdens easier to bear.  When we react to our burdens as though we are above them, they become heavier.  When we react to our burdens by fighting against them, they become harder to bear.  The humility to accept the burdens God has sent because we trust Him makes them easier.  The humility to know that we have no standing to refuse the burden makes it easier to bear.  The yoke of Christ is one assigned to Him from eternity past.  Part of that yoke is bearing our yoke with us.  If He committed Himself to us before we were created, then we can appreciate the sacrifice, humility, and love of God, which makes the burden much easier to accept.  It is His yoke.  The yoke of humility and meekness can replace the yoke of resentment, rebellion, and pride.  The yoke He has for us is shared with Him and is much lighter than the one we carry.  There is rest for the soul to be had.  It is a promise.  If we relinquish the yoke, we carry and pull with Christ, we will learn of Him and rest will be the result.