“Come to Me, all of you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.  All of you, take up My yoke and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for yourselves.  For My yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  Matthew 11:28-30  HCSB

Are you in a season where life seems exhausting? Are you tired from just putting one foot in front of the other?

When I first started working for the state, it was nice.  I would go into work and on an average day I was able to accomplish all my tasks.  There were hectic days of course where it sometimes took a couple days to catch up and get things back in order but for the most part the job was doable in a 40 hour week. As time moved on and technology advanced, we were provided with laptops which were designed to help us on those hectic days where we could enter information and keep our work caught up.  However, there was a catch.  They began to pile on more and more work until it was impossible to keep up.

As my boss used to say, we were just “putting out fires”.  We handled top priority stuff and other things got pushed to the back burner.  This often required coming into the office and spending a Saturday there with no one coming in and no phones ringing just to catch up.

More and more today you talk to people who find their jobs really stressful and exhausting.  In many cases, their home life is no better.  They live their lives in turmoil.  They have a few happy spots along the way but for the most part they spend their lives reacting to whatever life throws their way.

Well the Bible tells us to bring it to Jesus.  There are several places in the Bible where Jesus is referred to as our rock and our refuge.  Here he invites all who are weary and burdened to come to Him for rest.

Now you need to understand something, here.  God is not speaking of temporary rest like a weekend at a posh resort.  He is speaking of unending joy and living a life that is good.  You see, this world we live in is getting crazier by the minute.  If you don’t believe me, just listen to a newscast.

Living in these stressful times causes us to tend to live by our emotions.  When we do this, we live on a roller coaster.  We are up one minute and down the next.  Living this way can be exhausting.  I know, I’ve been there, done that, and got the t-shirt. For many years of my life, I was controlled by my circumstances.  If life was good, I was good.  If life was bad, I was low and weary.  God doesn’t want us to live this way, he wants us to keep steady.  He wants us to live a life full of peace and joy, not a life of ups and downs.

So perhaps you are living on that roller coaster and you would like to get off and ride a train that runs on a smooth, even track.  Well this is where this scripture passage comes in.  In order to live a life that is steady and a life that is peaceful and joyful and not controlled by our circumstances, we can’t be reactive.  We must commit to being proactive.  The first thing we have to do is come to Him.  We must come to God the Father through His Son Jesus Christ.  We have talked about praying the sinner’s prayer.  We must accept Jesus as our savior, we must believe that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and we must confess our sins and repent.  We must commit to change our ways.

Perhaps you have accepted Christ as your savior, but you are still experiencing a lot of ups and downs.  You are still having a hard time emotionally.  Then it’s time to take the next step.  The scripture passage says to “take up My yoke and learn from Me”.  Perhaps you are talking the talk but not walking the walk.  Are you doing your best to mimic Jesus every day?  Did you get saved and then just sit back and hope that everything would work out?  Well, it doesn’t work that way.  You have to stay close to God.  You have to find what it is that he wants you to do like we talked about yesterday.  This is where the whole taking up His yoke comes in.  God has something that he needs you to do and the best way to have peace and joy in your life is to get busy doing it.  Now if you have a job like the one from which I retired, then I understand you think that you can’t possibly do anything else.  I used to think that way to, but I found that when I made time for God in my life, he eased my burden at work.  He made more time for me to get my work done in my work day.

God tells us to learn from Him because He is gentle and humble in heart.  Did he ever get angry? Yes he did, if you will recall he overturned tables in the temple.  Why did he get angry, because people were disrespecting God’s house.  People were disrespecting God his Father.  Wow! What if the only time we got angry was when someone was disrespecting God our father.  Where we get into trouble with our anger is that our anger is usually brought out when someone disrespects us.

Jesus was fully human and fully God and we see a couple times in the Bible where he reacts to something, such as the people turning the temple into a den of thieves.  But the Bible is absolutely chocked full of scripture that shows Jesus as being meek, gentle, humble.  Many came against Him and He did not lash out.  You see the difference.  When people came against His father and His father’s house, he lashed out.  When people came against Him, he did not.  He answered them with wisdom and refused to lower Himself to their level.

As we close today, look at verse 30, “for My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”  Whether you are working a high pressure job or caring for an elderly parent or trying to raise young children and maintain a household, life is stressful and tiring.  Turn to God, mimic His behavior, find rest in Him.

Have a great day!