Pondering this morning how easily we put 'yokes' of slavery or burdens upon people in our thinking, in our demands, in our expectations and yet it is a two way giving and receiving that happens - we can place a yoke upon someone but they have to pick it up in order to receive it.
We put yokes of bondages on people when we expect them to do a certain thing, behave a certain way, when we judge them in our hearts, when we decide what is right or wrong and start walking out of 'law'. It is so easy to do with one another without even realising what we are doing.
Yet on the other side we as individuals have to learn to walk in a place of freedom and like the scripture says in Gal 5 "don't let yourselves be burdened again with a yoke of slavery". People can put things upon us, but in Christ we are set free, we are not subject any longer to yokes of slavery unless we allow it, unless we receive it.
So individually we all have a part to play - as a people to try to live in the grace that has been given to us, that we can give that grace to others and not place yokes of burdens on people and allow people to live their own lives in the Lord and in what the Holy Spirit will teach them and for ourselves not to pick up things that are not ours to pick up.
Because of this, I see many christians walking away from other christians because of the various yokes that 'seemingly' and 'mistakenly' get put on one another and yet I believe when we all take responsibility for our parts of giving and receiving yokes, we can all learn to live in freedom in the place the Lord has with those people and love one another as we should, giving and receiving grace and forgiveness, allowing the Lord to change us all on the journey together.
We put yokes of bondages on people when we expect them to do a certain thing, behave a certain way, when we judge them in our hearts, when we decide what is right or wrong and start walking out of 'law'. It is so easy to do with one another without even realising what we are doing.
Yet on the other side we as individuals have to learn to walk in a place of freedom and like the scripture says in Gal 5 "don't let yourselves be burdened again with a yoke of slavery". People can put things upon us, but in Christ we are set free, we are not subject any longer to yokes of slavery unless we allow it, unless we receive it.
So individually we all have a part to play - as a people to try to live in the grace that has been given to us, that we can give that grace to others and not place yokes of burdens on people and allow people to live their own lives in the Lord and in what the Holy Spirit will teach them and for ourselves not to pick up things that are not ours to pick up.
Because of this, I see many christians walking away from other christians because of the various yokes that 'seemingly' and 'mistakenly' get put on one another and yet I believe when we all take responsibility for our parts of giving and receiving yokes, we can all learn to live in freedom in the place the Lord has with those people and love one another as we should, giving and receiving grace and forgiveness, allowing the Lord to change us all on the journey together.
