Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.
- Matthew 6:24
Come to Me, all you 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.”
- Matthew 11:28-30
Our stories disclose in a general way what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now. If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it-then you are ready to take certain steps.
At some of these we balked. We thought we could find an easier, softer way. But we could not. With all the earnestness at our command, we beg of you to be fearless and thorough from the very start. Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.
- From Chapter 5 How It Works; Alcoholics Anonymous
The first two of the above quotes are the words of Jesus from Matthew telling us that we must deny self and even embrace the death of self and follow Him, but assuring us that what He has called us to do is easy and light compared to doing it any other way. The last quote is read aloud before many recovery meetings and has long ago been applied to far more topics than the original issue of alcohol. It comes from a passage that shares the 12 Steps, summarized and paraphrased as we can't, there is a God who can, let Him, look honestly at the past, share it, ask God to change us, see our wreckage, make it right where we can, continue to serve God and others, seek closer relationship with God through prayer and mediation and once we have found life share what we have been given with those who still suffer.
It doesn't sound easy. Neither the verses nor the steps sound fun, comfortable or easy. They most certainly do not sound self satisfying, because they aren't. They are calling for a death to self. Self is never going to find that appealing. And it is not in our nature to not protect self. Something has to be broken before we are willing to reject and even kill self. But relationship with God through total surrender of self, the sacrificing of self, and love and service to Him and others is actually the easier, softer way. Especially once we've been broken.
Life starts chipping away at us from the moment we breathe our first breath, and we all start dying from the moment we are given life. So, truthfully, we are all broken. But some of us are more broken than others, and blessed are the broken because they can see that they need help. The broken innately understand that the answer lies in ridding ourselves of self, but this is not something we can do of ourselves, by ourselves or for ourselves. So the person trying to fix self on their own tends to embrace self and become even more self centered, even as they commit slow motion suicide with self sabotage, self destruction and slavery to anything that provides the illusion of help, comfort and relief from the misery and weariness of life.
When the illusions are destroyed, leaving nothing but the bottom of the pit we have fallen into, revealing the truth of the hopeless bondage of our brokenness, it becomes much easier to cry out to God with the desperation of the drowning, even for those who do not even believe in God. While those who can not see that they are broken find it hard to believe that they need a Savior, that they need to be fixed, restored and freed. Some people find the gilded cage and the security of their chains to the death of self that comes with true freedom.
But the yoke of Jesus is designed to fit us perfectly when it is embraced with humble submission to Him and taken in love for Him, there is nothing that fits more comfortably. We were made for it, and it was made for us. When we go to move in that yoke and do the work of serving God and others while under that yoke, we discover that it is designed with the spiritual physics of grace that allow us to pull a load we could never move on our own. Like a lever allows the lifting of the world, so the yoke of Christ makes the impossible possible.
If we attempt to stay wild and refuse the domestication of the hand and will of God, fighting and refusing the yoke, what we discover is that the weight and weariness of life will kill us. We learn we can not care for ourselves. We need the Master of the yoke to give us water and food, to protect us from the weather and the predators, to care for our wounds and inoculate us from disease. Being cared for is better than being on our own in the world. It is easier. It is the only way we can survive and have a life worth living.
But we must be careful not to go too far the other way. Some desire the care of God but still want to protect their self and save their self. So they refuse the yoke and harness of Christ, stepping past them to grab the straps of religion and pull. Imagine stepping between the yoke and the plow, grabbing that which connects them and trying to do the work that was only ever intended to be done from the position and with the aid of the yoke! It would be like stepping up to a load of a thousand pounds that is on a lever so well designed and positioned that a child could lift it and saying, no, I don't need the lever. I'm going to lift all this weight myself.
The work of serving God and serving others, the work of loving God and loving others, the path of choosing to do what is right over what is wrong, is not something we can do on our own. We can't move that load, pull those straps and plow. It was never designed for us to do it. It's for too heavy and hard. The good deeds of religion are not the path, the answer, the solution, or even possible long on their own. They are straps that are supposed to connect the call to serve (the plow) with love (the yoke of Christ). Wrapping ourselves in those straps without the yoke, without putting ourself under the dominion and authority of the will of God, only binds us to a load we can not ever pull and makes us as miserable as running wild without the grace of God active in our lives.
The illusion of freedom found in refusing care and the illusion of security found in giving up freedom instead of giving up self are two sides of the same coin. The heathen and the religious have something in common. They are killing themselves and making their lives miserable in an attempt to escape the yoke of love. It seems foolish to both groups that the way to joy, peace and love and a life worth living, that to save our life, we must embrace the death of self. So they kill themselves in an attempt to save themselves. But for those who are broken enough to be desperate, they find it is all true.
In surrender to Him and the yoke of love, loving God and others instead of seeking first the comfort, security and rights of self, our life is everything that makes breathing worth it. We have purpose, a new freedom and a new happiness, life that is so worth living that others will see it and want what we have, love (the ability to both receive it and truly give it), peace that doesn't make sense, joy that sorrow can't destroy, and so much more. We can do what could never be done before or by ourselves. The weariness and misery and heaviness of life fades. The yoke of service in love and for love's sake is easy and light, because it is the power and love of God that does the work and does not come about because of our will and power.
This is not philosophy. This is the truth that I have found from the experience of trying everything I could try besides that yoke. I tried wild hedonism and independence and living for self. I tried restrictive discipline, self control and religion. None of it worked. All of it was empty and lifeless. But the love of Christ enabled me to do what I could never do and gave me a joy, peace and purpose in life that I never had anywhere or anyway else. What worked for me will work for you.
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