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Kendra Graham notes from : Matthew 11:28-29
“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden, 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.”
THE FACTS: Come to Me all who are: weak & heavy-laden. I will give you rest. Take my yoke and learn from Me, you will find rest for your souls.
THE LESSONS: This blog post came on a difficult day for me. I’ve been given the day off from my job at he hospital, which might not seem like a bad thing, but in my heart of hearts I can’t afford the day off. I’m a labor and delivery nurse and mostly just work in the summers and a few other dates throughout the year. This schedule gives me flexibility, but is not a consistent source of income. This day off set my fingers running numbers, and put my head and heart in an absolute panic!
In this moment, God purposely set my eyes in His Word on this verse today: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy laden, 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” Matthew 11:28-29.
Like me, have you ever had a difficult time resting? Like being in control? I like knowing that my children’s needs will be provided and paid for by hard work. But not today…God whispered in my ear, “Rest.”
After panicking and shedding a few tears, I wondered, “Doesn’t God know I NEED this day of work?” While I was crying, God whispered again, “See how tired you are, dear one?” And as I write these words, I’m off to crying again. I am tired…so tired, weary and heavy laden.
This verse is in red… red letters…the words of Jesus–God with skin on, and He has said specifically to me (and you too)…”COME TO ME, {Kendra}, and I WILL give YOU rest.” Jesus is giving me a rest from my responsibility– not in the way that sounds–I don’t want to walk away, hide in my house and quit my job…but God is willing and able to give me rest in the midst of work. Isn’t it comforting to know that while we take responsibility for our children and love them more than words can say, ultimately, they belong to God who loves them more than we could even imagine?
An alternate rendering of this verse in the Greek explains it like this, “Come to me all you who are working to the point of exhaustion.” Is there anyone out there who can relate? Some of us are absolutely overwhelmed. We have things on our plate that we never asked for, and we have found ourselves in a stormy, out of control, season of life where we are just trying to breathe. Where we are working and working, and doing the very best we can, but rest is eluding us.
So what do we do? This verse tells us exactly what to do… “COME TO ME.” I’m seeing that perhaps God is allowing me to be completely over my head and in a place where I can’t handle it. I think maybe God allows times like this to prove His sufficiency to me. God is flushing the pride out of me and reminding me that it’s not about my control over anything. This verse shows me where I am… and then tells me to come to Him with it all.
So, where do I go? Where do you go when you are stressed to the max? Who are we turning to? Are we going to the wrong source? Is that why we are in such a panic? I know that’s why I’m in such a panic. I want to turn to my job, pay check and bank account…. which is always, and will always be insufficient. Perhaps being overwhelmed and unable to make numbers crunch is actually a wake up call to come to a deeper intimacy with my God (Psalm 63).
After I come to Jesus, the next command the verse gives is to take His yoke upon me. The phrasing here, with the yoke being put on…you put the yoke ON. This phrase “putting on a yoke” does not imply that the oxen will sit in the barn, but that he is going out to work. The way oxen work is that the younger, more ignorant oxen is paired with an older one; the younger oxen just follows in the steps and in the direction that the older oxen goes in. The older oxen bears most of the burden of the work and knows where to go in the work; the younger oxen just has to focus on following where his partner leads.
Here we see God is not swooping in and erasing all our problems in a grand manner. He is not lightening the load just yet, but we are to come and stick our head in His yoke and follow where He is going amidst the responsibilities that are before us. HE promises this: YOU (personal pronoun here, you, {Kendra!} WILL find rest for YOUR soul.
Jesus is not relieving me of the responsibility, but rather relieving me of the burden of that responsibility if I just follow Him.
Today, through His yoke, He led me to actual REST. The burden for my workday rests on Him. The burden of the needs for my kids rests on Him. GOD HAS GOT THEM and ME in His hands… God loves my children more than even I do! I am saying this out-loud to myself as I type it, because it is so hard to believe sometimes.
We all want to control our own hours, pay checks, every little aspect of our own little worlds, and yet God wants us to rest, and let Him bear the burden.
Each of us must set our yoke to follow Him. HARD WORDS for me today, how about you? He’s telling us to REST…REST…REST. So what choice do we have? I have chosen to rest today, calling on Jehovah Jirah–MY Provider, YOUR Provider– who is not ignorant of our needs at all, yet knows them more intimately than we can ever imagine.
APPLY IT: Who or what is the source you run to when you are weak and overwhelmed and have worked yourself to the bone?
Will you set yourself in the yoke of Jesus and His Word, or will you try to solve everything in your own failing and insufficient strength?
Is this time of your life perhaps pressing down so that you can see your extreme need for an all- sufficient God?
Is God calling you to a deeper intimacy with Him through this circumstance?
LIVE IT OUT: Today, when I begin to panic every hour on the hour, knowing that all I have to give is insufficient, I will set my head to claim in my heart who YOU are. Today I will REST in Your yoke, You have given me.
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What Scripture are you studying now? What have you learned? How has the Lord spoke to you? Share with us in the comments section.
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