Burdens of Believing in God

My boyhood impression of God was very positive.  I learned about Him from my parents and other adults; and from the Bible.  Jesus seemed like a kind man with gentle, assuring words like, “I am the Good Shepherd (John 10: 11).  However, as I grew older, I began to view God’s commandments as burdens that restricted my freedom.  I was particularly wary of Jesus’s stern principle:  If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me (Luke 9: 23).  Was Jesus my Friend or was He a cruel taskmaster?

Whoever He was, Jesus was patient—and persistent.  I could not dismiss the Gospel claims about Jesus dying on a Roman cross for the sin of humankind; then, being raised from the dead on that first Easter morning.  Maybe Jesus had every right to invite me to “take up my cross daily” and follow Him.  After all, He had left me an example—He obediently carried His cross to His death by crucifixion.

As an adolescent, I learned to associate “cross bearing” with the love of God for all people.  That God’s love is expressed through “burden bearing” became more real to me one Christmas when we received stamps from Father Flanagan’s Boys Town.  Each stamp pictured a boy carrying his younger brother on his shoulders to school in the deep snow.  On each stamp were the words of the older brother expressing his burden-bearing love: “He ain’t heavy, Father.  He’s m’ brother.”

God continued to affirm His love and patience toward me as I finished high school and college.  Then, as a graduate student, I repented of my sin under the Power of Christ’s cross.  I felt the burden of sin and guilt roll off of my shoulders.  Then, through prayer, I invited Jesus to become Lord of my life, and willingly began to live as His servant.  Since then, I have been making it my priority to follow Jesus’s invitation in Luke 9: 23, noted earlier.  In seeking His path of self-denial and cross-bearing, I am moving ever closer to what the Apostle Paul described as knowing Jesus intimately, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings (Philippians 3: 10).  But, please don’t think I have “arrived spiritually.”  I gladly identify with Paul’s humility when he wrote, Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on… (3: 12).

Being a Christ-follower (disciple) requires disciplines that take years to develop.  Thankfully, God does not ask His followers to “go it alone.”  Instead, each obedient Christ-follower (those who “keep His commandments” as explained in 1 John 2: 4-6) “abides in Christ” and Christ abides in him or her (1 John 4: 16).  Therefore, Christ-followers are spiritually united with each other in the body of Christ.  And so, we who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another (Romans 12: 5).  Like embers of a fire that maintain their glow by staying together, so each Christ-follower can keep his or her faith ablaze by following God’s plan to regularly gather together for worship, study, and relationship-building in Christ (Hebrews 10: 23-25).

John the Baptist--Burdened and Alone
In spite of my growing faith, I was still puzzled with the apparent contradiction between the blessed life God offers and the burdens He expects His children to bear.  Matthew 11 addresses this apparent contradiction.  Here we learn that John the Baptist was languishing in prison like an ember from the fire separated from the fellowship of other Christ-followers.  John’s faith was apparently faltering.  So, he sent his disciples to inquire whether Jesus was really the “Expected One.”  After all, John had been sent as a forerunner of Jesus to call his listeners to repentance and to point out the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1: 29).  Could it be that John had been mistaken?  If not, why was Jesus requiring him to bear such a burden of lonely imprisonment and impending death (Matthew 14: 1-12)?

F.B. Meyer writes in Great Verses through the Bible (Zondervan, 1966): 
“The Baptist was tempted to take offense with Christ, first, because of His long delay in asserting Himself as the promised Messiah; and secondly, because of His apparent indifference to his own welfare. "If He be all that I expected, why does He leave me in this sad plight, extending to me no word of comfort; making no attempt to free me from these dark, damp cells."

Meyer then applies John's suffering to the lives of burden bearers today:
“Are there not such hours in our lives still?  We say, if He really loves us and is entrusted with all power, why does He not deliver us from this difficult and irksome condition? Why does He not hurl these Prison Walls to the ground? Why does He not vindicate and bring me out to the light of life and joy?”

Jesus answered John's plea with this encouraging reply to the messengers John had sent:  Go and report to John what you hear and see: the blind receive sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them. And blessed is he who keeps from stumbling over Me (Matthew 11: 4-5).

In the words of F.B. Meyer, Jesus was saying to John the Baptist,
“’Tell him to trust Me, though I do not deliver him.  Assure him of the blessedness which must accrue to those who are not offended at My apparent neglect.  I will explain all to him some day.' Thus, he speaks still.  He does not attempt to apologize, nor to explain--He only asks our trust and promises blessedness to those who do not stumble at life's mysteries.”

Jesus-- Perfect Burden Bearer
Today, many people bear heavy burdens.  Those who reject God’s claims on their lives and live under the penalty of sin may encounter unbearable burdens that lead to depression, drug addiction, and even death.  At the same time, obedience to Christ does not guarantee an easy path.  Statistics reveal that more and more Christ-followers are suffering greatly for their faith.  At least 327 million Christians are enduring persecution according to Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).  Approximately “245 million Christians in the top 50 countries on Open Doors USA’s 2019 World Watch List experience high levels of persecution (i.e.: torture, rape, sex-slavery, forced conversion, murder and genocide), an increase of 14 percent from 2018.”

Many people who have been and are still suffering for their faith have been encouraged by the words of Jesus to the imprisoned John the Baptist.  First, Jesus’s words contained no hint of condemnation of John’s weak faith and doubt.  Instead, we see a God who allowed John to suffer the burden of rejection and persecution now come alongside through His Son Jesus with words of love and encouragement (v. 4-6).

Second, we see Jesus’s response when His ministry faced the burden of ridicule and rejection: He sought comfort in the Spirit of God and in fellowship through prayer with His Father in Heaven (v. 25-26).  And finally, Jesus, as if He is strengthened in His own resolve, lovingly invites all to come to Him by faith to receive relief from heavy burdens He knows we are carrying, and invites us to share in His “easier yoke.”  Jesus says,

Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, 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 shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (v. 28-30).

When we submit to Christ’s “easy yoke” in faith and in recognition of the great burden He bore to purchase our freedom from the curse of sin (2 Corinthians 5: 17), we gain access to His love and strength to bear our own cross for Him.  Jesus reveals Himself as gentle and humble in heart, willing to understand our limitations and to give us a reasonable yoke to bear.  As we submit willingly to His strong presence under His “yoke,” we will actually find “rest for our souls.”  What an amazing truth!  Jesus makes our burdens lighter because He helps us carry them.

Burden Bearing Benefits of Abiding in Christ
The Apostle John as a young disciple of Jesus experienced close-hand Jesus’s great love for His Father in Heaven and for all mankind.  John’s Gospel includes Jesus’s most thorough teaching on burden-bearing obedience to God as an expression of our love for Him (John 15: 9-13).  In his first letter, John explains in warm, personal terms the blessed result of saving faith in Christ:  For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not burdensome (1 John 5: 3).

The aged Apostle John who penned these words had learned the answer to the apparent contradiction of how a person could find blessedness in burden bearing.  John’s answer, in a word, is “love.”   John wrote in 1 John 4: 19, We love, because He first loved us.  He wrote in 1 John 3: 1, See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are. 

How do Christ-followers respond to such great love?  By offering their willing obedience.  Jesus described obedience as “abiding in Him” like branches connected to the True Vine (John 15).  Just as the branches of a grapevine produce fruit from nutrients supplied by the vine, so our abiding in Christ produces in us the fruit of righteousness—i.e. expressed qualities of right-living that please God.  These qualities of love, joy, peace, patience, etc. (Galatians 5: 22-23) are formed in us as we yield to the work of God’s Holy Spirit in our lives.  He is our Helper, Teacher, and Counselor (John 15: 26; 16: 13-15).  As we abide in our Savior, love our Father in Heaven as Jesus loves Him, and rely on God’s Spirit to empower us, God’s love in us becomes blessedness in the midst of the burdensome. 

Remembering the words of the boy carrying his little brother, I can say, “Jesus’s commandments are not burdensome (1 John 5: 3), He’s my Brother.  He’s shown His love for me by dying on His cross, then rising from the dead and sending His Holy Spirit.  Thanks to His Spirit, my Helper, Teacher, and Counselor, I can find His yoke easy and His burden light (Matthew 11: 30).”

How About You?
Maybe you are now carrying heavy physical or emotional burdens.  If we are honest, we have to admit that we all bear burdens of one sort or another.  Some of us bear burdens of our own making by our wrong choices.  Christ-followers remember Jesus’s promise that in the world you will have troubles (John 16: 33a).  Many Christ-followers experience God’s loving nearness most when the burdens are greatest.  In those times, we realize the remainder of Jesus’s promise:  …be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.   Have you experienced peace, relief, and even blessedness during times of heavy burden bearing when you surrendered to Jesus’s yoke?