“Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30.
The not so good news is that getting there is not an easy formula. This is not like ordering fast food. It is a long-term pursuit, it requires perseverance, and the assistance of grace. It entails forfeiting self, surrendering our will to God, all of which are long term efforts with ups and down, progress and setbacks. The reason it is not easy is that we are not here to merely exist, nor to nibble at happiness or sadness. We are here to become, becoming is a growth process and growth requires time.
To come to a point were we take upon ourselves Christ’s yoke requires a process. Here is how I see it:
1. All of us are yoked with something, some of us with many things. In order to take upon us the yoke of Christ, to be yoked with Him, requires us to make room for Him. We need to break the yokes that stand between us and Christ and lay them aside. Yokes that are not of Christ are just a form of bondage.
The literal bondage of God’s people was something He promised to break off. For example,…Leviticus 26:13, Isaiah 10:27, Nahum 1:13 which yokes can be figurative for whatever yokes burden us now. A key is that the yoke removal was always in a future time, in the Lord’s due time.
A good thing to remember as we work to remove the yokes that feel so heavy upon us at this time.
I love Isaiah 58, which teaches us that as part of the blessing of a sincere and real fast, and dedicated sabbath worship, is that we can “break every yoke” Isaiah 58:6. Some of those things which burden us are tenacious, like the evil spirits that “come not out but by fasting and prayer.” Through the process of focusing on a particular yoke, and making it a matter of our fasting and prayer, followed up with sincere Sabbath worship, our yokes can be broken. I have seen it, and know it is so. First, we need to ponder and ask, what lack I yet, and then make a note of the yokes that are interfering with our communion with Christ. Then one at a time, slowly work to break them. There are two major yokes that seem common to man that we must break. The yokes of Selfishness, and Willfulness.
2. The antidote of the yoke of Selfishness is of course charity. But we can’t just decide to be charitable. It is a gift from God. Thankfully Mormon taught his son how to obtain it.
“Wherefore, my beloved brethren, pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. Amen.” Moroni 7:48
It is true that by ourselves we cannot love everyone, as God does. Human love is limited. While we may not be able to love some people as deeply as others, God can and does love them all. If we are to break the yoke of selfishness we must pray fervently over time, for that gift. Until we are filled with it, we can still progress by opening our hearts and allowing God’s love to at least pass through us.
Corrie Ten Boon shares a sweet experience of how this can happen, when our own love is weak. She recounts meeting an SS Guard she recognized from her time in a concentration camp who extended his hand toward her, she remembers:
“Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him. I tried to smile, I struggles to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I prayed, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.
As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself.”
Son, this is a very real thing. I love your mom more deeply than I do any other person on earth. Yet at times, when I have given her blessings, I have felt a new, deeper, more powerful love fill my soul as the Father shared his love for her with me, it was beautiful and frankly a bit frightening.
We must pray for that love to fill our hearts, and work at serving his children, doing all we can to bless them. When we fall short, we can strive to let His love move THROUGH us, until at the end, we become like Him, and that perfect love will then flow FROM us.
3. We must break the yoke of willfulness by surrendering our wills to Him. I love this quote from Elder Maxwell: “The submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. The many other things we 'give' are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us.”
Of course, praying thy will be done, and praying to be able to say thy will be done, and truly meaning it, is part of it, the other part is that in small increments we must work at surrendering our wills. When we face choices, we should strive to ponder what would the Lord have me do. Sometimes when I have been totally frustrated with doing my own thing, I have plead with the Lord “What wouldst thou have me do?” In such times I meant it. Other times, I have just pushed on doing my own thing, ignoring the thing God wanted me to do. We should pray to know His will, and for the courage to do His will, and with a covenant to act upon whatever revelation He give us. That is the process to breaking the yoke of willfulness, and again it is a long-term pursuit.
4. Finally, we must be willing to try and help others break their yokes, Alma taught it thus:
“And it came to pass that he said unto them: Behold, here are the waters of Mormon (for thus were they called) and now, as ye are desirous to come into the fold of God, and to be called his people, and are willing to bear one another’s burdens, that they may be light; Yea, and are willing to mourn with those that mourn; yea, and comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and to stand as witnesses of God at all times and in all things, and in all places that ye may be in, even until death, that ye may be redeemed of God, and be numbered with those of the first resurrection, that ye may have eternal life”
As we seek to assist others in breaking their yokes, our own yokes will become weaker.
I do not believe that one day, when all the stars are aligned, and our pray is just perfect we will suddenly be yoked with Jesus. Rather, I believe that day by day, prayer after prayer, small act of service by small act of service, repetitive, small, daily sacrifices of our selfish needs for others, draw us closer and closer to Him, until one day, we will find him at our side, carrying our burden, and delighting in the fact that we are heading in exactly the same direction, with exactly the same determination, and exactly the same motivation.
I see this as the way, but I also acknowledge that I am only on the path. I have felt times of nearness, and as I grow old my heart is becoming more tender, and my desires to be yoked with him increasing. It is my desire to see it come to fruition that keeps me trying, repenting, and working toward that end. He has given me glimpses, and small tastes of it. I know it will come, and when it does, it will be glorious.
Love ya
Dad