{"id":1343,"date":"2019-01-03T17:22:36","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T00:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/?post_type=portfolio&p=1343"},"modified":"2019-01-03T21:30:33","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T04:30:33","slug":"burden","status":"publish","type":"portfolio","link":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/gospel-express\/burden\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus Wants to Bear Your Burden with You"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY RICK WARREN \u2014 JANUARY 3, 2019<\/p>\n

\u201cCome to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 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\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>(Matthew 11:28-30 RSV).<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what burden you\u2019re carrying. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s weighing you down. But I do know the answer to your trouble.<\/p>\n

Jesus says,\u00a0\u201cCome to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 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\u201d<\/em>\u00a0(Matthew 11:28-30 RSV).<\/p>\n

For many years I never understood that Scripture, because I didn\u2019t know what a yoke was. When Jesus says, \u201cTake my yoke upon you,\u201d it sounded to me like he was going to give me something else to deal with. My burden is heavy enough already, Lord! I don\u2019t need to take your problems on me!<\/p>\n

Then I learned that a yoke is actually a board with two arches in it that you put over two cattle so they can pull a cart.<\/p>\n

The value of a yoke is that it halves the load. Without a yoke, one cow\u2019s got to pull that entire load by itself. But if you yoke up the cow with another cow, then the two animals pull the load together, and the load is half as heavy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When Jesus says to take his yoke upon you, he\u2019s not saying he\u2019s going to give you his problems. Jesus doesn\u2019t have any problems! He\u2019s saying he\u2019s going to share your problems. He\u2019s going to share your load. He\u2019s going to take your stress on himself and bear it with you.<\/p>\n

Wow!<\/p>\n

He uses three notable verbs in this Scripture: come, learn, and take. Jesus says, \u201cCome to me. Team up with me. Then, learn how I do it. Take on a lighter load. This is going to reduce your stress. This is going to make it easier for you to navigate.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re yoked with Christ, you move together with him. You move in the same direction and at the same speed. And you move in the right direction and at the right speed.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"featured_media":1344,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","tags":[],"portfolio_entries":[35],"class_list":["post-1343","portfolio","type-portfolio","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","portfolio_entries-english-writer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/1343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/portfolio"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/1343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1343"},{"taxonomy":"portfolio_entries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ocbf.ca\/2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio_entries?post=1343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}