It is a new day and I just want to thank God for being the God I desire. For bring who He is: beautiful, holy, to be desired above all things.
For I am still fighting my battles and when other desires and temptations pull my heart, the only thing I could do to stop myself being wrenched away was to turn my thoughts to Him. These deadly, attractive thoughts close to my heart, knowing where to target where I am most helpless, telling me that fighting back to starve those unlawful desires is only something that will court endless misery.
I feel like just lying down there awaiting to be devoured, too tired to move or fight. And fight I couldn't. This morning on the bus back home, my usual time of spacing out those thoughts desires and memories came to haunt me. I couldn't fight back to resist. But thank God He was faithful. I didn't have to fight. I only had to look.
It was not easy, remembering how to look, to want to look. For looking at God meant even more pain in denying myself. But the moment I chose to, those evil shadows fled. They fled, and I was at peace. My strength that was gone ebbed back in.
And then I understood what Jesus said when He said that His yoke is easy and His burden light. Yet two chapters after that I shuddered to read of the cruel death that John the Baptist went through. The way he was trivially beheaded thanks to the whims of a king's daughter who allowed herself to be used by her vengeful mother. How is such a yoke easy, God, I struggled. My heart went out to this faithful man's death.
My struggles can make my heart ache but they are nothing compared to martyrdom . Yet each day, many times a day, I must subject myself to death, putting to death the desires of sin on the cross, putting to death me who wants me to be pleased. Yet it became easy when I could draw strength from God, knowing that He is good, He knows, He understands, He prepared me for this and He is my reward.
You alone my strength, God. You alone my shield. You alone my heart's desire, and I long to worship You.
His yoke is easy because you don't even have to die to self, or even fight, to already be counted as his child: justified, righteous, and loved.
ReplyDeleteThe reason you die to self now is because He first died for your soul, and it's the only reasonable respond to such a radical love (as Paul says in Romans 12:1). It is no more a yoke, but a reciprocation of love.