(Note: I wrote this post at 2am last night, but was unable to post it until now due to an internet outage in the area.)
Matthew 11:29-30 (New King James Version)
29 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. 30 For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”
I didn't understand this passage fully until now. I didn't realize what this verse meant until I stepped back and looked at life. Notice how it says my burden is easy and my yolk is light. It does not say that there is no burden at all. Rather, it says that that burden is lighter than the burden of sin.
I sit here and contemplate this revelation in the darkness of my dorm room at two in the morning and am left speechless. The burden of being a Christian alone, and living up to the testimony and ministry levels that that calling requires is heavy enough. But I sit here dazed as I add to that burden the weight of what it is to be the godly man, husband, and father that I will someday, Lord willing, be called to be. I think back on everything my father is and has been for me, and realize that I too am going to need to be that for my kids some day, and I just can't imagine it. I think of all that I will need to do to provide for my family, and all that I will need to be for my wife as her godly spouse and I nearly cannot breathe. And then I think yet more and find my mind reeling over what it will be to be a minister if that is God's calling for me, after living in a home under such a calling before and I am stunned.
How can I be all of those things with any relative standard of glory to my Lord? I cannot. I cannot be any of those things apart from His grace. I pray continually...even in these sleepless hours as I toss and turn unable to rest tonight...that God will give me the strength to live up to the challenge and enable me to be all the things that He needs me to be. Because I know all too well just how impossible it would be on my own.
1 comment:
This may sound trite, but recognizing your complete inability is the first and most important step toward finding the strength and grace that are only found in Christ. Even a man as amazingly gifted as the Apostle Paul, when he considered the weightiness of being an apostle, cried out, "Who is sufficient for such a task?" Our sufficiency is in Christ, and not in ourselves.
Yes, we do feel the burden of service, but the yoke is on the shoulders of Jesus and He carries us through the tasks to which He calls us. As I look back on the last 19 years, there are so many ways that I see my own failings as a husband, father and minister. Yet, in spite of me, there are many good fruits that God has brought out of my feeble efforts and used to glorify Himself.
Paul said, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us" (2 Cor. 4:7). We are clay pots, which God is pleased to use to accomplish His purposes. So, as you feel the press of responsibilities, both present and future, always look to Him - confess your own weakness - and trust in His empowering grace.
I could not be more proud, Ben, of the many ways that I have seen God's grace at work in your life. And I am confident that He who began a good work in you will see it through to completion in the Day of Christ.
Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus - the author and perfector of your faith.
Love,
Dad
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