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 11:29-30
Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it. Luke 17:33
(Just so you understand – the language of this devotional is the way the Holy Spirit speaks to me. These are the questions and ways He confronts me. Authors note: many think my writing is too confrontive, taking it as that I am coming from an authority position looking down on others and trying to ‘correct’ them. When in actuality – these questions and style is what the Holy Spirit is piercing me with. This isn’t written to condemn others – this is written to acknowledge His deep personal ‘work’ on and in me.)
How much are you working on ‘preserving your life’ in your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly efforts? How much effort are you putting into your emotional ‘comfort’? How much is the Holy Spirit directing your life? Are you deluding yourself thinking you can control ANYTHING outside of yourself? Are you the ‘center’ of most of your thoughts and daily efforts? How much intimacy with the Holy Spirit consumes your day and actions? Can you do ‘life’ and ‘work’ all the while having an ongoing dialogue in your mind with the Holy Spirit? Are you attentive to His ‘small’ promptings throughout your day? Do you even ponder the questions and directions He is giving you? Do you recognize Him throughout your day, or are you stuck in your own religious rituals and formulas you are trying to perform so that “you will be a proper Christian … for Him”? How much of your relationship with God is performance rather than real heart intimacy, honesty, and transparency?
So what is the purpose of my questions here? To help you realize that some of your own habits have no real eternal value spiritually. What really is important on an eternal scale? Do you sacrifice the eternal for the immediate? What is your scope of your vista? Can you just stop and ponder? Can you just stop and ask the Holy Spirit? About… everything? Why? What would be the reason for the Holy Spirit to take your body as His temple – if He didn’t want to permeate every crevice of your entire life? So much of us are determined to ‘do what we want to do’. How is that working out for you? Whose ‘yoke’ …are you locked into? Do you think Jesus and the Holy Spirit are supposed to be locked into your ‘yoke’, plan, dreams, desires, etc? Whose life are you really living? Yours or His?
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
Sigh. And Selah.