Latest / BECOMING | Biblical Truths, Purpose, Identity in Christ, Grow Towards God / 2. Allowing the heavy moments to be light
Transcript
- Elly Nelly: friends welcome back we are so back welcome to becoming I am your host Ellie Nelly I'm so glad that you are here listening to this episode before we get started really quick I just want to say if you haven't watched the first episode yet I would encourage you to go back and watch that first because it kind of sets up the mindset that we're looking through the rest of these episodes with so if you haven't listened to that one go ahead and give it a listen I think it's pretty good if you have We are just ready to jump on in. So today's episode, we're gonna be talking about how the heavy moments can feel light with Christ. and I don't really personally feel qualified to talk about much of anything, but people say talk about what you know, and a little bit about me is this past year, so I turned 24 in July, but my previous year of life, my twenty-third year, was actually really challenging and I had a lot of hard moments, I would say almost the whole year was just one long, heavy season from one thing to another. First it was health issues, then it was job stuff, then it was just me struggling with my own value and worth Well, that to say, that was not an easy year. I am so, so thankful to be out of it. and I'm thankful to have gone through it, I think, because if I hadn't gone through that hard year, I wouldn't be here doing this podcast with you right now and we wouldn't be able to hang out and have this moment. So I know for a fact that the Lord does in fact work all things for good. So I feel like I have just a little bit of knowledge about how to walk through hard things and how the Lord met me in that and how He allowed my burdens to feel light, even in those heavy seasons. so that's what we're talking about today, looking at the passage of Matthew 11, 25 through 30. So let's get into it together. Two minutes, thirty seconds. Matthew eleven twenty five thirty says, At the same time Jesus said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son, and those whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Then Jesus said, Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am gentle and humble at heart. You will find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. This is an amazing passage. And when I was praying about what the Lord wanted me to talk about for these first few episodes, I felt like this phrase: My yoke is easy and my burden is light. I kept thinking about that phrase and I was like, okay, cool, but it felt heavy to just jump right in. But I think life is heavy. So we could beat around the bush, we could talk about other things like how to want to read your Bible every day or where to start and all of those are amazing things and I would love to chat with you about them. But I feel like it's good to just jump straight in and to get real. With the hard stuff. So if we were to break this down, I want to highlight things that I think are so important in the first few verses and provide some context. So the first thing I'm noticing is what Jesus, Jesus' posture towards the Father. The first three things are about that, and then the last two things are about us and our heart posture. So the first thing is praise. Jesus starts by saying, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. He acknowledges God's position in his own life and praises. Praises him for the things that he is yet to go through, for the things that he is going through in the middle of a hard season. And being a Christian for 24 years of my life, I've realized that I don't automatically praise God first when things are hard. I'll praise him when things are easy, I'll praise him when I have those wins in my life, things that I can be celebrating, but I don't praise the Lord when things are hard. That's not my first response. So checking myself here. Am I praising the Lord when things are hard? Probably not, because it's a very unnatural thing to do. But God is the God of the upside-down kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, which is so different than things here on this earth. So being open to doing things in a heavenly way instead of an earthly way, which is praising God first. the second thing I wanted to make note of is the context being shown that it's important for us to soften our hearts. Now, what I mean by this is The passage before in Matthew 11, before verse 25, is Jesus goes to these different towns and villages and he teaches and he performs miracles and he dwells with them for a time and then he moves on. And the people that he dwell with, dwelled with, they don't repent from their sinful ways. He calls out the sin in their lives, he admonishes them to more, and they aren't really interested in that. They harden their hearts towards him and they decide that they don't want to change. And so Jesus is talking to the Father, saying, Hey, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, hey, those people who thought they knew that they had the right way, I came and showed them they didn't, and they were too stubborn to change their hearts. Like the Lord isn't revealing himself in new ways to them because their hearts are hard, but he is revealing himself in new ways to those who have hearts and faith like little children. not childish faith, but childlike faith, keeping it simple. and so I think the next thing to acknowledge is is my heart s being softened towards the Lord in these hard moments or is my heart being hardened towards the Lord in these hard moments? and the third thing to acknowledge is when it says, Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. So the Father is pleased and excited to engage with those who are pleased and excited to engage with him. That's what it's That's what it's about being in relationship with the Father. those three things, and then the last one would be to allow yourself to walk in the invitation. So it kind of gets a little confusing, and I'll I'll break some things down here. But the next part of the passage says, All things have been committed to me by my father. No one knows the son except the father. No one knows the father except the son, and those whom the son chooses to reveal. to him. So when I read that I was like, whoa, whoa. This is this is the roundabout. It feels like we're using triple negatives here. I'm just trying to figure out who he, son, father, what is exactly happening here. So I did some research and it turns out there are two words in the Greek which means to know, which is the word that is used the most in this phrase, to know. So there's one to know where you can know of something like knowing algebra or knowing about Pillows or knowing an equation. So those are you can have knowledge, but to know the other way is an intimate relationship to know like a person. Like I know my husband and I know what makes him happy and what makes him sad and what he likes to eat and what keeps him up at night, and I like intimately know about him. And so this is what Jesus is saying right now is he's saying, I intimately know the Father, and the Father intimately knows me. We are completely known by each other. And then the last part of that verse says, and no one knows the father except the son, and those whom the son chooses to reveal to him. We are the people that the Lord has chosen to reveal Himself to. And so we're invited to walk in this invitation of being known. Not only being known as a person, because that's like our strongest desire, is to be known and seen, but to be known in the good times, to be known in the bad times, to be known at our best, to be known at our worst, to be known in the days that are just days that go by and we don't really think about them in all of those spaces and all of those ways to be known. Deeply and intimately in the way that the Lord knows the Father, we're being invited into that. So thinking about having hard seasons, thinking about having hard moments, we're actually being invited to praise the Father, to soften our hearts, to delight in Him, and to walk with Him in an invitation to be known, not only in the seasons that are easy, but also in the seasons that are hard. Which brings me to the the larger chunk of this, which is the la our big two takeaways, our big two thought points that are coming from this verse, this passage, which is Come to me all of you, all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. So my question is, what are the burdens that you're carrying and what is preventing you from resting in this season? I think we can agree that in some degree or another, even in the good seasons, we can be weary and we can be carrying burdens, even if they're not the biggest of burdens. And this side of the garden is burdenful, not burden free. So to acknowledge that there's never really gonna be a point in time where We're like, my gosh, I have everything one hundred percent made, no burdens, never gonna have to think about, you know, living life in the heavy seasons, because in some degree there will always be a heavy season occurring in our lives in one aspect or another, whether it's personal, relational, school, sports, there will just be something that isn't going according to plan. And that's kind of the way that life is. I'm sorry if I'm the first person to share that with you, but That's kind of the way that life is here on earth after the garden. It's burdenful, not burden free. So, what do we do with these burdens when we have them? you come to me with your burdens, I'll pick those up, I'll package them, I'll send them away. You never have to think about them again. No. But he does say that he will be with you and give you rest in those times. Rest is found, at least in my experience, rest has been found in not walking alone during seasons of hardship. there's this poem I really like and I am going to butcher it because I don't have it written down. But the essence of the poem is the author is describing walking on the beach and she's walking on the beach alone and then she sees a partner, a man, come and he walks alongside her and He helps her and then the waves and the tides get strong and she starts stumbling and not being able to carry on very well. And she looks back and sees that there are two footprints, two sets of footprints behind her. So she knows that he is walking with her. And the waves get even more intense and more hard and more tumultuous. And she looks back and there was only one set of footsteps. And then after the waves settle and the storm passes. She looks back again and sees that there are two sets of footsteps. So she asks the person next to her. She says, Hey, where were you? Where did you go when I needed you the most? And the person next to her says, I was carrying you through the hard times. That's why you only saw one set of footsteps is because they were my footsteps, not yours. And I think when looking at seasons of hardship and hard times, we often go, God, where are you in the midst of all of this? And God loves us so much that He wants to be with us so badly. He wants to be invited in. He wants to provide for us and redeem us and delight in us and renew the broken parts of our lives that we don't acknowledge the work that He is actively doing in those seasons. I don't think I realized all that the Lord was doing by just being with me in those seasons, my my last hard season, that I would get up every morning and I would have my quiet time with him and I would journal about how I was frustrated and I was bitter and I didn't want to forgive and I was hurting and I was really upset with the Lord because I was like, Are you not seeing this? And the Lord brought to mind that poem and I was like, No, the Lord is the Lord is quite literally carrying me through this in my quiet times, getting to have a relationship with him and share with him the hard stuff that I I didn't even want to say out loud because I was so angry I didn't want to let other people know how angry I was and how hurt I was and how frustrated I was. And I was able to just dump it all at the feet of Jesus and for him to be able to hold my hand and walk with me through that was the rest that I needed in that season that I I couldn't imagine what that would have been like without him. It would have been just horrible, just truly, truly horrible without him. So that's there's there's that of walking with Jesus isn't that he's gonna take your burdens away, but that the action of walking with him is a lifting up experience, getting to be in an intimate, close relationship with the Father that we're being invited into. And then the last part of the verse says, Take my yoke upon you. We're just gonna take my yoke upon you. Then it says, Let me teach you, because I'm humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And so a yoke, not an egg yoke, not getting yoked at the gym, a completely distinct third type of yoke to add to your English vocabulary from a very Eastern cultural language is It means a wooden farming harness to connect two animals together, an older and a younger by a farmer. So this is like a wooden harness. It kind of arches and goes over the shoulders of two animal oxen, cows, donkeys, what have you. And they're pretty much strapped together and they're pulling something that's behind them. It could be a cart, a plow, a farming instrument. and their job is to pull together in the same direction, matching speeds, with the older one helping the younger one, moving in the same direction for the farmer for the purpose achieving of achieving their goal. And So that's what a yoke is in a historical context. It isn't something we use in today's language, but I think it's really important that we are able to take off our Western lenses and put on our biblical Eastern lenses to try to understand that it wasn't written to us, but it was written for us. So how can we understand from the perspective of who it was was written to? How can we make that for us? Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart. So there are two different masters. If you were to break it down essentially in this living realm that we exist in in planet Earth, there are two different masters. One is the master of this world, and one is the master of heaven. And I think sometimes I see people and they go, No, I'm not, like, I'm not a Christian. I don't believe in religion. Like, I'm free. I am not chained down by anything, I'm not tied down, I'm not restrained by anything. Like I'm living my life freely. And I don't genuinely think that we as human people are able to live a completely free life. And I I think the freest life that we can live is the one that we're living in the house of the Father rather than in the realm of the world and having the world be our master instead of the Lord. And so what this were to look like, if we were to play out this metaphor in a farming context, it would be the Lord is the ha the farmer of the house and he wakes up early and he feeds us and he gives us water and he tends to us, he keeps all the predators away from us, he harnesses up us up for a long day's work, we work hard, we work purposefully. At the end of the day, he feeds us, he, you know, makes sure we're all taken care of. We have blankets, we have food, we have shelter. And if there's anything hurting us or ailing us, he helps treat our wounds and heal us and make us well so that we can continue to work for him purposefully, not painfully, but to have a hard day's work with a rewarding purpose. That would be what it looks like to live on the farm of the father. But to live on the farm of the world would look like to have a shepherd or a farmer that gets up and doesn't really care about you. He wakes you up, he doesn't feed you well, he doesn't water you well, he doesn't care if you're hurt, he just throws you out there to work. You work and work and work and work and your job is pointless and meaningless and you don't feel a sense of purpose in the hard days, in the long days, and you're put away and he doesn't care if other predators come to you, he doesn't care if harm befalls you, if you're injured or sick, it doesn't matter, you just have to keep going. And it's grueling and it's unrewarding and it's ruthless. And people think that living in the house of the Lord is being burdened or being tied down. Whereas I think living in the house of the world is actually what causes us to struggle so much and to feel a lack of freedom. And I think people who live in the world Go, there's no like I'm free. There's no way I would want to choose something else. It's like a reverse grass is greener situation where once you live in the freedom of Christ, you know that it really is freedom. You have been freed from all of this hurt and strife and suffering. Not to say that you won't ever endure it, but to say that you've been freed to carry that load lightly by someone who loves you, attends to your needs, and cares about you. And that's where the freedom is. So when the father says, Let me teach you. He's talking about teaching us, growing us, but not keeping us back from hard things. Because he's humble and gentle at heart, he doesn't s want to see us hurting. He doesn't want to see us in pain. But there are things that we inevitably have to go through that are very growing seasons, very pruning seasons. I don't know if any of you guys like to look at plants a lot, but plants die if you don't tend to them. grapevines you actually have to go through and pretty much eliminate all of this foliage, all of the branches and everything that looks good, you have to get rid of it at the end of the season so that it can produce more fruit in the upcoming season because it's not limited to the ways and the paths and the shoots and the branches that it already has. You're opening up more possibilities for it. Yeah it is painful for the for the branches and it doesn't look nice for a while until everything grows back. But The intention of the father as the gardener in our lives is to prune us gently and humbly so that we can grow and produce more fruit as we continue to abide in him. the last point I want to make is he says, Let me teach you, and I think he teaches us. every day if you're having a quiet time with the Lord you're meeting with him you're praying that's the biggest way the Lord meets you but the second biggest way in my mind is discipleship which is learning from others and teaching others it has been probably my most radical point of growth in my entire life is having women who are just a step ahead of me or three steps ahead of me or half step ahead of me love me look after me care about me and women who are a step or two behind me or a half step behind me being able to help them as they continue on their in their faith journey. I've had youth leaders and older women who have loved me so well and prayed me through my hard season and at the same time I was a youth leader to other students and I really wanted to just throw a hissy fit and kind of a temper tantrum and be like Does nobody see what's happening to me? but instead of doing that, I thought, okay, what kind of example would I be setting for my girls if I just like threw everyone under the bus and made a big fuss about everything and caused all this drama and allowed stuff to bubble over and blow up and I was like that would that would not be a good example for me to set for them. So in in my last hard season having people who loved me and told me hard truths and wouldn't pull their punches and cared for me and also people who I still needed to care for and love and tell hard truths and not pull biblical punches. That is was like a hug from the Lord. Everything that I needed, I felt like he had provided for me based off of those two communities of people in my hard season that helped lighten my load and helped me feel the responsibility of honoring the Lord in all things, especially the hard seasons. I feel like you can honor him all the more than in the easy seasons. So all of this, all of this passage, all of these breakdowns, talking about praising the Lord, softening your heart, inviting God in, walking in the invitation to be known and to know, to release your burdens and leave them at the feet of Jesus so so that he can walk with you in that, to take the yoke of the Lord because it is light and he will give you rest. All of those things are good things to know. But how does that help us become more like the person that God created us to be? That's a good question. And I think for every one of us, it's going to look different how this applies to our lives. So I would like to leave you with some growth questions that you do not have to go through. These are not homework. These are just questions that you can think through, that you can journal through throughout the week to help you grow and start. meditating on and percolating through what the Lord has for you specifically in this season. question one what is hard that you need to start thanking God for? How can you praise God in this season? Question two, Heart analysis, just do like a little heart check in. Like, is your heart being hardened towards the Lord in the good seasons and the bad seasons, or are you continually praying and asking the Lord to be like, Hey, please soften my heart, please soften my heart, please soften my heart? And if you're like, I have literally never once prayed for my heart to be softened, I would encourage you to do so. Start praying for it and see the way that the Lord changes the way you see people, the way you interact with people. if there's people that you don't like, the best thing that I have ever done is prayed blessing upon them and prayed for the Lord to soften my heart towards them because He's given me little sneak peeks into their life that have helped me love them better when I haven't wanted to love them at all. third question is are you allowing your heart to walk in the intimate close relationship of being known that you're invited into? If yes, what does this look like for you in this season and how has it impacted you? If no, what is holding you back from accepting this invitation to be known? What are your hesitancies or hindrances in your relationship with the Lord that you're like putting up a wall there and kind of establishing a boundary that isn't helpful for your heart in the long run? Question number four, are you letting God give you heavenly rest? And how can his rest look different than you anticipated it looking in your life right now? I think a lot of times I think, well, if God were to give me rest, then I would have two hours to like watch TV and clean my room and fold my laundry and do the dishes and paint my nails and then I would be happy and that's the rest that God needs to give me. But a lot of times the rest that God has given me is someone stopping me and asking how my day is going and I'm pretty honest with them and they stop and pray for me and that's the rest that my soul needed, or someone giving me a hug and saying, Hey You're doing a really great job. I see you. And the Lord sees you, and we're both proud of you. And that has been the rest my soul needed. So, how can rest look different than you anticipated it looking? how is God sneaking it in there in all these little ways? and then the last questions are you carrying the yoke of the Lord or are you carrying the yoke of this world? Are you participating in biblical dis biblical discipleship? Having someone a step ahead of you, having someone a step behind you. if so, with who? Write down who these people are that the Lord's given you and how have they impacted your walk? How have they grown you? How have they shown you more about the character of Christ and shown you who you were called to be, who you were made to be? And if not, if you haven't been a part of biblical discipleship, maybe write down a prayer, asking the Lord to bring someone alongside you. Who can grow you and help encourage you and pray for you and be open to who that is. And I love writing down my prayers because then I have documented proof that the Lord showed up at this time and this place to answer my prayers. So writing them down is a great way. So if in six months from now the Lord brings you someone, or in two weeks from now the Lord brings you someone, you can be like, my gosh, the Lord actually answered this prayer that I wrote down. those are my growth questions for you. I pray that the Lord blesses you and keeps you and lets his face shine upon you as you work day in and day out to become more like the person he created you to be. God bless you.