Anxiety can be an unseen struggle with hidden fears and worries piled high in our hearts. It is not unlike holding a tower of dinner plates, tipping left and right, with the potential threat that one or more dishes might come crashing down at any moment. Our eyes fixate in fear on the wavering tower; our hands grip tightly, our bodies work hard to hold the weight and maintain balance while our minds are filled with thoughts of an impending downfall. We become emotionally, spiritually, and physically exhausted from our internal efforts.
Is this you? Do you feel burned out, longing for internal peace and rest that surpasses all human understanding (Philippians 4:7)? Do you bear a load of anxious suffering, hard-pressed on every side, perplexed, feeling persecuted, and beat down, yet yearning to say with faith that you will never be crushed, in despair, abandoned or destroyed (2 Corinthians 4:8-9)?
The world encourages us to utilize one of the thousands of calming behavioral solutions or self-help practices. Religion tells us to be good, always do right, and then God will bless us. Our flesh tells us to work hard, have some dignity, don’t be a cry baby. None of which are helpful in a lasting way.
Work demands, family obligations, financial worries, physical struggles are all legitimate concerns that can weigh us down and make life feel unbearable. We strive externally trying to hold it all together, but internally, we are crying out: “What will happen if...” or “I cannot take any more burdens on me or I will crumble…” or “I am dreadfully tired of working so hard to hold my life together.”
And then, it happens; eventually life comes crashing down around us. We are left confused, scattered, shaken with fear knowing our attempts of self-management were, as we thought, futile. Is there no hope for the burdened? Are we trapped forever under the weight of our anxieties and fears?
Oh, friend, there is hope! His name is Jesus. Jesus sees, and He cares. He has heard the prayers of your heart and is, even now, calling you into a new and restful way of life in Him.
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30
What a beautiful and hope-giving invitation: “Come to me!” Jesus does not issue a directive to “go and do” but instead an encouraging call to rest in Him.
Do you wonder how Jesus can make such a radical invitation? How can He invite all the burdened people around the world and throughout time into rest? Jesus can do it because before the foundations of the world, before you or any of your troubles ever were, He made a plan with the Father to rescue you from every burden and bring you rest through His death on the cross.
Jesus’ simple and direct invitation: “Come to me!” was issued before time began, kissed with
compassion by God the Father, sealed with Jesus’ blood, and personally addressed by the Holy
Spirit to you and “all who labor and are heavy laden.”
At His birth, Jesus entered into our humanity with all its cares, anxieties, and fears. And His experience with these frailties steadily increased throughout His life, culminating at the Mount of Olives, where Jesus labored in earnest prayer, sweating blood with fearful anticipation in His flesh of the agonies and crucifixion that were to come (Luke 22:44). Jesus was beaten and whipped until His skin hung in ribbons from the vicious scourging (Isaiah 50:6). He was spat on, mocked, and abused in every way possible. Nothing we endure will ever compare to what Christ suffered that day. Then Jesus was forced to pick up the estimated three hundred pound cross on which He would die. The physical burden that the Romans soldiers solicited another man, Simon from Cyrene, to drag the cross to the top of the hill while Jesus silently continued His ascent bearing the invisible and much weightier burden of all our sins, sicknesses, and sorrows - burdens that only He could bear.
“He himself bore our sins in his own body on the cross” (1 Peter 2:24).
“Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” Isaiah 53:4-5 NIV
We all fall beneath our invisible load of sins, anxieties, and fear, but Jesus, our holy Burden-bearer, successfully hauled them up the hill of Calvary. With each faltering step, Jesus lowered Himself in humility and labored in sweat, pain, blood, and filth, saying: "Come to Me. Consider the way of my cross closely; it is your relief. Look at Me and see that I labor in love for you. Do not work to do what I have already done. It is My work that will give you daily and eternal rest and in which you will find peace for your weary souls."
“For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” Hebrews 12:3 NASB
At the cross, Jesus continued to serve out our sentence of hard labor, hanging by the nails in His hands and feet in sweat and affliction, persevering for our peace and freedom from captivity to anxious struggles. He was crowned with cruel thorns, a symbol of the curse of hard work that fallen man received after Adam’s rebellion (Genesis 3:17–19). Jesus took every sin, every one of our self-righteous efforts, and every shameful burst of guilt in our conscience and put them to death in His body. He redeemed us from the curse, giving us an astounding blessing (Galatians 3:13) instead. He worked to His last gasp, standing in our sinful place, the righteous for the unrighteous (1 Peter 3:18) so we could rise, redeemed in Christ in resurrection power. We received His righteousness from His perfect life of sinlessness and atoning death as the only true sacrifice for sin.
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” 2 Corinthians 5:21 NIV
In verses 29-30 we are told:
“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. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:29-30
In our fear, we can be tempted to walk alone, as if we were a solitary beast of burden, plowing a field of anxiety day after day.
Jesus asks us to come to Him, release our yoke to Him and take His easy yoke upon us. It is a
well fitted and kindly yoke, encased with love.
Jesus said: “the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). It is a wonderful yoke that is gifted to us at our salvation when we put our faith in Him as our Savior and Deliverer. Galatians 2:20 describes this glorious and unchangeable yoking:
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20