Easier Yokes. Learning Humility and Gentleness from Jesus.
Rocking chair. Brown leather Bible in one hand. Milk-white coffee mug in the other. Inhaling the Montana landscape through a picture window.
That is how I spent my mornings two weeks ago at Refuge.
And then I went fly fishing.
I’m not going to lie. A voice that I mistook for my conscience needled my heart. “How could you leave your young family for five whole days to go fishing? How could you ignore your text messages when people need you? What kind of a husband and father are you? What kind of a pastor are you?”
But you know what? It wasn’t my conscience saying that. It was my pride. And there’s nothing better at revealing pride than rest.
What Jesus did not teach about rest
Jesus says,
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble 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)
I’ve come to think that Jesus is not saying here what many of us have been taught. The MAEV (Modern American Evangelical Version) translation of this passage says,
“Come to me, all you who are weary, and I will give you prayer. If you’re exhausted, tell me about it. Metaphorically hand me your tiredness through prayer, and I’ll make it go away. You’ll feel better if you just give it to God!”
(Ok, you’re right. This translation doesn’t exist. Thank God.)
But that is nothing close to what Jesus is saying. You can know this through simple experimentation. Ever been in an absolutely grueling season of life and tried to pray the exhaustion away? Did it work?
Didn’t think so.1
You can also know this through reading what Jesus actually says.
He doesn’t say he’ll take away the exhaustion. Jesus says, “I will give you rest.” That is, he will give you the practice of actually resting. Another way you can translate the Greek phrase ἀναπαύσω ὑμᾶς is “I will make you stop.” The verb Jesus uses (ἀναπαύσω) is the root of our English word “to pause.”
In other words, come to Jesus with the ailment of weariness, and like a good doctor of the soul he will give you a prescription for rest. But Jesus’ prescription is less like a pill and more like physical therapy. It will require our intentional participation over time if it’s going to have an effect.
How does it work?
Rest, Humility and Gentleness
When you come to Jesus with a weary soul, his aim is not simply to give you a breather and a bit of encouragement. His goal is to teach you a new way of life. A way to carry your work, your yoke, like he does.
We will lead a life that doesn’t exhaust us when we carry an easy yoke. A light burden. So what will Jesus teach us that will help us do our work, parent our children, and fold endless piles of laundry in a way that doesn’t feel like a burden?
…learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart…
Humility and gentleness.
What is humility?
Humility is not thinking less of yourself. It is not emotional self-flagellation or beating yourself up. Not once in the gospels do we see Jesus hitting the heel of his hand to his forehead and muttering, “Stupid! Stupid!” That’s not humility. It’s self-shaming.
Humility is also not thinking of yourself less. The most prideful people I know tend to have one thing in common. They lack self-awareness. Sure they could think about others more, but they could really do with a heavy dose of guided self-reflection as well.
No as once said, humility is not thinking less of yourself or thinking of yourself less. It is thinking of yourself rightly in relation to God and other people.2
How does that help you rest? Well, let me ask you some questions.
Are you tired because you are trying to be too many places at once? Scheduled back to back meetings? Rushing to drop the kids off at school? You might need to remember that while God is omnipresent, you are a finite human being.
Are you exhausted from trying to keep up on the news cycle while not missing a beat at work and finishing those two books and three podcasts you’ve started? You might need a reminder that God is omniscient. But you were never meant to be.
Have you worn yourself out trying to be the perfect colleague/employee/employer, son or daughter, spouse or parent? No dish will be left uncleaned, no sock will be left drawerless, no email unresponded to (or if it is you’ll feel incredibly guilty about it?). Perhaps it would help to know that no one asked you to be perfect or omnipotent. Those are God-words.
Rest forces you to be in one place, to pause your working for a while, to leave unfinished business behind. And in doing that, it teaches you that you are human. You are finite. You are limited to one thing in one place at one time. You are not God. In word, it teaches you humility.
Rest also teaches you gentleness.
What is gentleness?
If humility is thinking of yourself rightly in relationship to God and others, gentleness is behaving appropriately toward God and others. If humility is recognizing you are not God, gentleness is refusing to play God.
That said, a gentle person is not timid. If you meet one, you might not think of them as soft. The gentlest person who ever lived flipped over tables in the temple courts and publicly called Pharisees whitewashed tombs.
Gentleness is refusing to force the world or coerce others into the shape you want them to take. It is not running roughshod over the agency of the people around you, but rather respecting them as fellow human beings even when they’re wrong.
How much deeper would you inhale if you gave up trying to force the people around you to change?
How much more restful would your day to day be if you were trying to craft words that invited rather than cajoled?
How much more centered would you feel if you started that phone call knowing, “It’s not my job to change him. And he may very well not change. And I’ll still be ok”?
Now this is why Jesus makes us pause in order to teach us gentleness: It’s the practice of rest that gives gentleness space to seep into our soul.
Rest allows you to set down all the things you do to mold the world and other people into the way you would prefer them to be.
Rest exposes the lie that the world will not be ok without you.
Rest requires you to trust God with your work, your loved ones, and your life.
As we begin to trust God, to really trust him, we release the pathological need to change others. Our work becomes less fraught with the pressure to shape things and people into our own image.
In learning humility and gentleness from a practice of rest, we actually begin living a more restful life.
Coming home from Montana, I feel lighter. More joyful in my day to day responsibilities. More at peace with my life. More aware and embracing of my limitations.
But the reality is the light yoke will get heavier and heavier and even begin to weigh me down if I don’t maintain a healthy rhythm of practicing rest. That’s why Sabbath comes every week, my friends.
If your yoke, like mine, feels heavy sometimes and you feel like you’re always running, let’s run to Jesus.
But just be aware: he’ll probably invite you to stop.
I will say that prayer can certainly relieve the anxiety we feel that is often connected with our exhaustion (see Philippians 4:6-7). My point here is not that prayer doesn’t work, it’s that prayer by itself doesn’t defeat exhaustion if we keep living our life the same way.
Heard at a seminar she gave in the Presidio of San Francisco on November 10, 2022, hosted by Stratum. You can also find some of this in her book, Humble Roots.
Hey Kyle,
Wow ... this is giving me lots to think about and pray about. Rest, as you well know, has never been my strong suit, my go-to, I have resisted my whole life I think! Now I find my body forces my hand ... and I wish I had listened sooner. But still I find myself resisting! Well, lots to learn! Thank you for this! Will re-read (rinse and repeat :) Be Still and know that He (and He alone) is God!
This was a great, thoughtful read. Especially in a time when it can feel wrong rest. I think about “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” where he mentions the idea of “our soul catching up with our body.”