In the latest journal entry I was reading Henri was talking about how a fragmented life leads him to anxiety. A fragmented life is one where we come to see that different areas of our lives require us to be different people. For me it would be as if I believed the husband, the friend, the leader, the foreigner-Parisian, the follower of Jesus, and the dad all had to be different people…to wear different hats. Henri says that the reason that he lived this way because he had a desire to be the best Henri he could be in all of his different roles…and in the end he found himself serving his own identity and reputation more than anything else.
The more I find myself doing this same thing, the more I realize that I am going against what Jesus taught and knew was best for me. Jesus said that one cannot serve both God and the things of this world…we have to be single-minded in our devotion to God. We have to stop wearing all the different hats that we think we have to wear in order to please everybody and only put on the ‘hat’ of being a learner and follower of Jesus.
Jesus said, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Jesus only asks me to wear one yoke…yet I find ways to wear many.
Jesus says that His yoke is gentle…yet the many I try to put on are often brutal
Jesus says that His yoke is easy…but when I try to wear all the yokes I think I need, life ends up hard.
Jesus says that His burden is light…the burden of wearing the yoke that is trying to carry my own agenda for my life is often very heavy.
I want my soul to find rest…I think that I just need to slow down and trust that wearing the yoke Jesus, being solely fixed to Him, will be more than adequate to bear the load of all that life has brought my way.
Thanks for this post…it’s exactly what God’s been wanting me to hear for a while and over the past 2 weeks He’s found ways over and over to remind me
Yeah, I agree with Erin, great stuff Justin. This really spoke to me.
Especially as a fellow new dad, it’s hard to find time to be all the things I want to be. Somtimes it’s not so much that I’m trying to live up to the expectations of everyone else, as much as I’m trying to be everything I was before Alleke was born + being a dad, and it just doesn’t work. Something has to go.
The best solution I can think of is simply to follow Jesus.
Thanks. In the immediate context Jesus is contrasting his “yoke” i.e. his teaching to that of the scribes and Pharisees. His yoke is the yoke of Grace, not the crushing, chafing one of self-righteousnes, personal merit, performance, etc. As I experince Grace at deeper levels it begins to free me from role-playing and to live as the friend of God , a “beloved” son.