“The Easy Yoke, the Light Burden”

Part 2

  Only the Lord Jesus Christ executes a mastery and ownership of our lives that serves to establish rest of heart, while also enabling active minds, members, and faculties.  This He accomplishes by providing both motivation and might for the works to which He calls us.

   “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure” (Philippians 2:12-13).

    The Christian life involves such high standards of godliness and faithfulness that we require “the power of His might” to fulfill them (Ephesians 6:10).  Born again believers are not as the Israelites of long ago, who were commanded by Pharaoh’s taskmasters to make bricks without straw (Exodus 5:6-18).   God rather calls us to make bricks with completed buildings, as it were.  That is, we already possess “all things that pertain to life and godliness” (II Peter 1:3).  We thus trust and obey our Lord with the strength we already possess through the agency of the indwelling Holy Spirit.  “We shall live with Him by the power of God” (II Corinthians 13:4).

   The faithful obedience of this moment begins with the resting heart of faith in Christ’s presence and enabling.  We “live through Him” rather than according to our own auspices and agencies (I John 4:9).  Our benevolent Owner and Master made provision for our stewardship and servanthood long before we ever existed.  Thus, His yoke is easy and His burden is light to all who affirm that His power is present within us, and that His purpose for us is a God-empowered privilege to obey, as opposed to an overwhelming burden to bear.  We must hold this perspective of faith regardless of any evidence that may contradict, first, because it is true, and then, because the Apostle John plainly stated the holy means whereby consistently walk with God in a world and a life of challenge…

“This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.”

(I John 5:4)