Most people find life exhausting and they strive to find a point of rest for themselves. However, most people don’t get the rest that they need because they don’t know what they need rest from. Jesus’ offer of rest in the form of a ‘yoke’ gives us the answer. A yoke is a kind of harness placed on oxen to pull carts or ploughs. We all get yoked to various ‘carts’. These carts are the self-expectations and agendas that we live for. They are the things we feel we must achieve in life to be acceptable and significant. Every expectation and agenda that is not of God will be an oppressive burden to you. It will be like pulling a heavy cart. Ironically, when we strive to validate ourselves through our achievements, we are actually less likely to achieve what we have the potential to achieve because the expectation to achieve is so oppressive to us. The yoke of these expectations and agendas is designed only to inhibit and crush you. Jesus invites you to throw off the oppressive yoke of your own goals and self-expectations and take on his yoke, the yoke of his purpose. When you yoke yourself to Jesus’ cart you no longer have the endless exhausting task of making life happen. It is an easy yoke because when you yoke yourself to the cart of God’s Kingdom, you don’t have to pull that cart, that cart pulls you. In Kingdom life, God makes things happen, and you only have to respond to what he is doing. This is what it means to live in rest.
Throw off all those expectations which burden you and give yourself to God’s agenda.
Read Matthew 11:28-30
