The Relationship is The Freedom

You have to know the truth to be experientially set free. That is the only thing that works. Know the truth & live in freedom in a relationship with God.

If you take the truth & use it to apply principles or as inspiration to keep rules you've missed freedom & the relationship. The freedom is the relationship. When you are set free you walk with God & whatever happens during that walk is unique to you & Him. Don't try to apply truth to your life, instead walk out the discovery & usefulness of that truth with God.

The line between dead religion & living in a relationship with God can be easy to cross. While you can teach people the truth about God's love you cannot teach people how to lived loved in their relationship with God.

You can be taught all about God but until you engage with Him, walk with Him, & hear the truth from Him what you hold as truth is nothing but a treadmill, a knowledge that gives you the illusion of walking in a relationship with Him. The treadmill will stop working for you in the right circumstances. When it stops working you're left wondering what you did wrong & questioning your relationship with God. God was with you the whole time & getting involved in your life where He could even though you walked on a treadmill. The problem was that you were tiring yourself out & getting nowhere. You weren't on a journey with Him, a journey where you walk, rest, & relate. The treadmill never stops & your beliefs set the constant speed but a journey with God is relaxing, fun, & includes rests.

 Jesus knew that everyone is different & that people would live in different times & in different places. That is one reason why He gave His Spirit. One size fits all at all times for all time instructions on living that work don't exist. Jesus gave us His spirit to walk with us, relate to us, & teach us tailored to all of the uniqueness of who we are. God is love, His Spirit is love so He will always guide us in love. He is the living constant. He is the only universal ingredient in the Christian life. BECAUSE HE LIVES WITH US we can face anything. Not because He said.. or because you should.. but BECAUSE HE LIVES WITH US!

This post inspired by this God Journey Podcast Episode

Yoked or Unyoked is The Issue of Mankind

Hebrew letters started as pictographs where each letter was a picture. Those pictures can give us insight into what Hebrew words mean.
The Hebrew word for "sin" consists of 3 letters with meanings of separate, clay, & yoke.

The word sin hides this message about what the spiritual condition of sin is:  "Man separated from the yoke of Christ"

This was amazing enough & such a dead on picture. But then I took the Hebrew word that is often translated as "forgive." It consists of 3 letters with meanings of life, two, & yoke. So when the bible talks of someone who is forgiven it pictures "The life of two in a yoke." You & Christ yoked together.

Those hidden meanings then make this scripture a HUGE focal point.

"Come to me, all you who are tired & burdened heavily, and I will give you rest. 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. For my yoke is pleasant and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:28-30)

So this saying of Jesus is perhaps the greatest picture of salvation & a relationship with God in all of eternity.

What does Jesus give?
Rest
Wisdom
Pleasantness/Ease

How does Jesus treat you?
With gentleness & humility

Where have you heard God pictured like this?
He walks & works with you while directly teaching you in a relationship.
He treats you with gentleness & humility, He isn't demanding or harsh.
What He wants you to have most as He lives with you is rest, wisdom, & ease.

This is mind-blowing to me, that the very Hebrew words behind sin & forgive point to this precise saying of Jesus & the beauty of what Jesus describes a relationship with God is like. And let me tell you, it is exactly as He described. If you aren't experiencing God as Jesus described it isn't because you are doing things wrong. It is because you are believing the wrong things about God. Believe Jesus' testimony about Himself. If you think God has treated you without gentleness & without humility you've mislabeled something else as God (probably your own sense of shame). Jesus gives you the rest of having a love relationship with Him. To be yoked with Jesus means He says to you, "We are yoked together but I will pull the weight and carry the burden."


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Walking Under the Yoke of Jesus

The Responsibility of Our Relationship with God

We incorrectly learn that the responsibility of the relationship is on us. The question is not "How do I build a relationship with God?" it is "How do I begin to recognize how God is building a relationship with me?" He loves us so that we may live through Him and He live through us.

Our willingness to respond and rest is what ultimately makes the relationship happen because a relationship does take two. But when people think the responsibility of the relationship is ours we will make up or perform practices that we think will help us "get to God" that actually make a real natural relationship impossible. We will attempt to define what the relationship is when God should be doing that. Instead of trying to connect with the true God in spirit we follow performance based practices (religion) which cause us to ignore or write off God's advances towards us.

We can't force God to respond to us and trying to is an attempt to control Him. We can respond to Him and let Him reveal His love to us. Taking this burden that is not ours will lead us to work in vain & severely limit God. "Unless the Lord is the builder of the house (people/relationship) those who labor to build it labor in vain" (Psalm 127:1). "Christ is in charge of God's entire house and we are God's house" (Hebrews 3:6).

Religion puts the responsibility of the relationship on us. It tells us to love God before we explore His love for us. It tells us to work for God as an unquestionable slave master who has already given out His assignments instead of walking with a Father and doing work on that journey with Him when He tells us to.

Human relationships involve people trying to figure things out together. We are equal in that regard. God already has everything figured out. He already knows what is best and has already prepared good things for us to do. If we don't let Him be responsible for the relationship then He will still clean up our messes and work things to our benefit as much as He can (Romans 8:28). His love allows Him to do nothing less.

God is the ultimate expert on life and love that is why we follow Him. Most think of submission to God as obeying the scriptures and avoiding destructive behaviors but submission in the bible means "relational cooperation." It only takes place in a living relationship where God is presenting you with something to cooperate with.

We do have a say in our relationship with God. We can choose love or we can choose self and I don't mean selfishness I mean self-effort. We can let Him be who He wants to be, the greatest love and experience of our life, or we can take the responsibility of the relationship on ourselves thus trying to make Him be who we want Him to be for us in our short-sightedness.

The truth is that it isn't about us giving our lives to God, it is about Him giving His life to us. The difference is a life of recurring misery vs. a life of rich joy.

Walking Under the Yoke of Jesus

The true meaning of faith is trust. Trust is a relational word. Trust means we deem Jesus as trustworthy and we put our security in Him. Trust causes us to "take His yoke upon us and learn FROM Him." The result is that we work with Him. It is 100% about walking with, relating to, Jesus in the Spirit.

His yoke is easy, His burden is light, and His commands are not burdensome because they don't consist of all the commands in scripture. The commands are the ones He gives you as you walk with Him. Some of the commands are the ones in scripture but the beauty is that He tells you when and how to keep them. Instead of heaping His commands upon you He guides you during your walk with Him. Jesus does not give me the burden of keeping the whole law. Jesus gives me the rest of having a love relationship with Him.

Jesus said, "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 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. Walk with me and work with me--watch how I do it. I will walk alongside you. We will be yoked together but I will pull the weight and carry the burden." (Matthew 11:28-29)

"Everyone who trusts that Jesus is the Christ has been fathered by God, and everyone who loves the father loves the child fathered by him. We know we love God’s children if we love God and obey his commands.
For this is the love of God: that we keep his commands. The proof that we love God comes when we keep his commands and his commands are not burdensome, they do not weigh us down because everyone who has been fathered by God conquers the world. Our trust in God is the power that conquers the world. The person who wins out over the world's ways is simply the one who trusts Jesus is the Son of God." (1 John 5:1-5)


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Yoked or Unyoked is The Issue of Life