As promised in part 1, lets look here at Matthew 11:28-30. Jesus gives us an absolute solution to stress and worry.
28 Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls.]
So our part is to simply come to Jesus. Then He takes over and causes us to rest. He eases and relieves and refreshes our souls. He does that, not us. It’s Him doing it. He promised it and He will deliver.
29 Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle (meek) and humble (lowly) in heart, and you will find rest (relief and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet) for your souls.
Those who are not called to release the message of God’s ridiculous, radical, inexhaustible grace would find that task to be a huge burden. A struggle. But to those called to do so, it is easy and light, because it is not our burden, it’s His. It is our calling that He has equipped us for.
I like how the Amplified says it. He will find relief and ease and refreshment and recreation and blessed quiet for your souls. He will bring relief from the situation and make it easy. You’ll be refreshed by Him and He will add recreation and blessed quiet for your soul. It’s the whole picture of rest.
30 For My yoke is wholesome (useful, good—not harsh, hard, sharp, or pressing, but comfortable, gracious, and pleasant), and My burden is light and easy to be borne.
He takes our heavy, harsh, demanding yokes and replaces them with His light yoke that is easy. As I’m writing and studying this saying yes Lord, right behind it I’m finding myself struggling with letting many of my own struggles go.
The Christian life would be so much easier to live if we would just give up and let Him live it in us, for us and through us. Someone once said that the Christian life is not easy to live…..it’s impossible. It took me awhile to discover the truth in that statement. It means you or I cannot live the Christian life. We need to give up trying and let Jesus live it through us.
How do we do that. We continue to study to find deeper truth that will strengthen our relationship with the Father and His Kingdom. By doing so, the Father will do all the work and take care of all the situations in life that we cannot handle. Our job is to quit trying to perform and achieve and rest in Him.
In the majority of churches, denominations, and ministries, high demands are placed on people to perform for authority in the church and to satisfy man-made doctrines. What happens is that relationships suffer and some are totally destroyed. It is proven that environments which are highly pressured because of the demands of on going high performance requirements are damaging to relationships.
The majority of Christians are bound to legalism and religion, as a result of false teaching. These individuals have a relationship problem with God and it’s on-going. They are not confident that God loves them and have a hard time seeing Him truly as Father. These same people find it very offensive and even label it as sacrilegious when you call Father God, Daddy or Papa. Even though that’s what Abba Father means.
What is the by product of a life lived under strict performance requirements and failing relationships? The answer is feelings of rejection, insecurity and anger. Many Christians live with low levels of anger. They know they are angry, but they just don’t know why. They don’t want to be angry, but there’s no way out because of religion and legalism. It’s bondage to the rules, to others, to performance, to works and to tradition.
The only way out is to allow the great grace of God to set you free from this bondage. Galatians 5:1 reads “In [this] freedom Christ has made us free [and completely liberated us]; stand fast then, and do not be hampered and held ensnared and submit again to a yoke of slavery [which you have once put off]”.
Christ has made us free and completely liberated us from bondage, from fear, from worry, from stress. Don’t fall back into that yoke of slavery. That yoke is heavy and burdensome. Christ’s yoke has made you free.
You’ll have problems and worries and share them with others. The voices will start to swell up and opinionated advice starts to come your way. They have no experience in what you’re talking about, but they’ll sound like experts giving advice for your situation.
The worst source for information regarding situations is from religious legalistic church people. They will have a lot of advice why all this is happening to you and they’ll toss in that God has caused this to happen to you because of your poor behavior and performance. It’s God’s judgment coming down on you.
Well, that’s just a bunch of religious double speak and it’s totally false. Psalms 19:7,8 has a different truth. Here it is in the Amplified.
7 The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the [whole] person; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.
The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple. What the Lord says is perfect, it’s absolute, it’s correct, and it’s Truth. He has said we are holy, perfect, and heirs to the Kingdom. He said we have all power in heaven and earth (the problem is most Christians are not empowered due to unbelief). He said He loves us as much as He loves Jesus. He said He would never leave us nor forsake us. He said every good and perfect gift comes from Him.
All of what I just said He said is Truth. You go and find the scriptures for those truths. I can’t find any scriptures that say God is getting even with you and you’re having all this trouble, because of the way you act and don’t act.
8 The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure and bright, enlightening the eyes.
Judgment does not cause the heart to rejoice or the eyes to be enlightened. Where do people get the idea that our trouble is a cause of our poor behavior and God’s judgment upon us?
If the Lord’s testimony is pure, perfect, and Truth, then study the scriptures to find out what He truly said about you and about who He is in us. Quit listening to every false teacher who has nothing but an opinion about what Jesus said and find out for yourself exactly what Jesus said.
Let me end this study with this scripture that is so powerful. Study it in context for yourself in Ephesians 2. Here’s verse 10.
“For we are God’s [own] handiwork (His workmanship), recreated in Christ Jesus, [born anew] that we may do those good works which God predestined (planned beforehand) for us [taking paths which He prepared ahead of time], that we should walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us to live]”.
The problem with Christians that “read” this scripture is that they “read” this scripture. I meant to say exactly what I said. Quit reading and start studying. When you do you’ll realize that we are His handiwork and have been recreated, made new by Him.
Notice it talks about good works, but don’t read….study. It is those good works that have been planned for us beforehand and walking paths He has already prepared. When we try to do it ourselves, we will perform works He did not have planned for us to do and we’ll get on the wrong pathway that is not prepared for us.
When you get on your own path and your own works, you will not be able to live the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us to live. Again, He did it all. He planned ahead of time for the good works, which tells me they are easy and light and we get to step into them. He already set the pathway for us, which means we do not have to strive to follow it. It’s easy and light.
As we continue to get a revelation of His goodness and kindness, our relationship with Him will grow and all our stress, striving, worry, works and performance will fall by the wayside and blow away. He will fill up, with His mercy and grace those stressful areas of our lives and cause you to live the good life that He has prearranged for us to live and made ready for us to live. Grace and Peace.
