WEAR HIS YOKE: Stop trying to save yourself by yourself.

Artist CNY Reunion, A4J Group

February 7, 2011 7:30-10PM

Touch Community Theatre Jalan Buki Merah.

Prop List: coloured pencils, drawing paper, ipod, speakers, verses printed out, highlights journal, samples of postit notes.

Intro:

If we’ve known each other for more than a year, you find out that I love the New Year. I love fresh starts. I love the impetus to begin again - the seasonal natural proof that Spring follows Winter. It’s time for REFLECTION and RESOLUTIONS!

I love taking a personal retreat and asking the Holy Spirit to help me in brainstorming ideas for ways I should be growing, or things I’d like to do in the new year.

I do it on postit notes in categories:

Organizational, Intellectual, Relationships, Adventure...

Since 2004 I’ve done this exercise in community. Subsequently, friends give me postit note pads as gifts! Just look at some of my collection!

Discovering with other artist friends what types of dreams we have that we can partner in, or at least cheer each other forward in. When I started doing this, I had recently turned 40 and I still had dreams that, with enough dedication, discipline, goal setting and grit, I could become some kind of a World Class Artist.

Some of you are rolling your eyes about resolutions. But let me tell you, I started this journey with some eye rolling artists who now say that the exercise has been sort of life transforming. They may not have made some of the same life decisions or risks had they not joined me in 2004.

I always like to preface my postit notes exercise with some reflections on the past year. And in 2011, this is where I camped out for a long time. For weeks I’ve done more reflecting. Trying to make sure I’ve learned what I needed to learn from the lessons that came along in 2010.

Reading over my highlights planner (the only record of my life anymore that’s not digital, I remember lessons or insights from the year before), I saw the note after one particular sermon about relationships, a realization that Jesus was a world class lover of people.

This is a goal or dream that, coming up on 50 now, is probably something I can aim at & possibly hit: I want to be a world class lover of people. That’s what my reflections reminded me.

So, I embarked on to New Year exercise part 2: the postit note resolution making and I didn’t get past the IMPORTANT RELATIONSHIPS category: Loving Jesus better, loving James better, loving Cameron and Tyler better, loving my extended family better, loving my neighbors better, I mean, REALLY loving my circle of friends more honestly and genuinely better.

Jesus, increase my capacity and creativity to apply it to loving others better. How do you want to change my heart? What do they need from me to know your love better?

The rest of the resolution categories, the other possible resolutions, PHYSICAL (yep, as you can see there are a few resolutions that could be made in that category), INTELLECTUAL, PROFESSIONAL... they have no importance to me this year. Whenever I sat down and prayerfully pondered the postits in January, I couldn’t get past: RELATIONSHIPS: LOVE THEM.

So, as I prayed this past month about how to love you tonight, I’m very clear about what you need to hear from me. He wants to love you through me tonight. As God has guided the seemingly random input I’ve had, a number of avenues have converged on the following passage of Scripture. Including yesterday’s sermon at church was on the passage I wanted to look at - after I’d already written and printed out what I wanted to say.

Perhaps what I’ve been learning, you need to hear as well. Let me explain. Let’s look at

Scripture: Matthew 11.25-29

  Come to me ______

                   you who are weary and carry heavy burdens

                   And I will give you rest

                   Take my yoke upon you

                   Let me teach you

                   Because I am humble and gentle

                   And you will find rest for your soul

                   For my yoke fits perfectly

                   And the burden I give you is light. 

[PLAY: O, The Deep Deep Love Of Jesus, then Carlotta from The Mission] SKETCH: Can you take a few moments and sketch what may have come to mind for you as I read this passage?

What kind of burdens? Why are you weary?

You can continue to sketch, but I’m going to tell you where your burdens are from: You feel weary from trying to work hard to be good enough. The burdens are heavy, because there are so many areas where you must work to be good. You must work to be a good girl, or a good boy. You must work to be a good citizen. a good Husband. a good Student. Mother, Father. You must work to be a good Worker. A good Professional. A good Christian.

Jesus is saying to you this New Year:

SONG: Come to Me (Celine Dion)

I will always love you no matter what

No matter where you go or what you do

And knowing you

You're gonna have to do things you're own way

And that's okay

So be free, spread your wings

And promise me just one thing...

If you ever need a place to cry

Baby, come to me

Come to me

I've always known that you were born to fly

But you can come to me

If the world breaks your heart

No matter where on Earth you are

You can come to me

Don't walk around with the world on you're shoulders

And you're highest hopes laying on the ground

I know you think you've gotta try to be my hero

But dont you know the stars you wish upon they fall its true

But I still belive in you

If you ever need a place to cry

Baby, come to me

Come to me

I've always known that you were born to fly

But you can come to me

If the world breaks your heart

No matter where on Earth you are

You can come to me

And the seven sea's you sail

All the winding road you're on

Leave you lost and feeling all alone

Let my heart be your beacon home

If you ever need a place to cry

Baby, come to me

Come to me

I've always known that you were born to fly

But you can come to me

When the world breaks your heart

No matter where on Earth you are

You can come to me

You are weary from trying to be good enough your whole life. Jesus says, COME TO ME. He wants to give you rest.

REST. That may be all God wants you to take away from our evening together. He’s giving you the permission to rest - let HIM give you rest. He has spoken: Come to me. I will give you rest.

We could stop right here for many of you.

But for some, you need to think about:

What’s at the core of the burden?

We have been told the gospel, we believed it enough to admit we are sinners and need Jesus, and then we got on to work at being good enough.

We’re burdened because we’re trying to work to be good enough.

And when we’re not, we’re trying to work to cover up or hide that we’re not good enough. We’re trying to cover our bad.

So what do we do to cover our bad? To be good and acceptable? We HIDE. We work at being nice. Moral. Successful. We work at being creative geniuses. We work at being important...to cover up.

And with all this working going on, there’s no need for Jesus. We keep forgetting: He saved us once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous to bring you to God...(Hebrews)

You can’t help it. This hiding is our human default mode. It’s a human reaction to sin, from the Original Sin. The first persons who hid their bad were Adam and Eve.

I heard you God in the garden, and I was afraid because I realized I don’t have any clothes on! So I hid from you...

You also can’t help it because you were raised to be this way. You were raised to be a little moralist. A good person who needs to work to save yourself by the power of yourself.

Did you ever have this experience in your family? Cause, this is how it went with my children:

“Tyler! BE KIND TO YOUR brother!!”

And Tyler said, “[sigh. Ahhhh.] I’m  k i n d . You’ve said it, and I will it to be.  I am kind!”

Ha. It doesn’t really work that way does it? Tell the child to shape up and they will it in their own power to be good. Nope. Doesn’t work.

Did you ever experience this? Child does bad and parent...

Ahrgh! you did it Again! Go to your room. You make me sick. You will never....Argh just...get out!

In other words when we mess up the response is condemning.

I just can’t deal with you right now!

And the child is split off relationally because they were bad. By rejecting you...I mean, by rejecting the child, the child slowly slowly in the deep gets sent into hiding their real self, trying hard to be good, but can never be good enough.

So, when this is all you ever are told is,

BE GOOD!

Then slowly, slowly over time you’ve come to a core belief that you can’t be loved as you are Which is BAD and nobody can cover your bad except for you, and the only way to cover it, is by being good.  

Let me ask you something.

Did you feel loved by your parents when you were good?

Did you feel loved by them when you were bad?

Did you feel MORE loved when you were good?

That’s what I thought.

You grew up programmed to think that no one can love you in your bad.

But here’s the bright side:

That’s what has made Singapore so great! To prove your worth, to show you are great and worthy and not just a tiny red dot, you’ve grown into a society of high achievers totally driven to excell.

But, That’s also what made some of you -- especially as artists creative people who’s hearts aren’t drawn to careers that will make the parents proud or give you respect and draw a high salary -- you gave up on being accepted. You instead were driven as a teenager to give up, act out, drop out.

Perhaps you came to believe in the core of your soul that no one could love you or who you are - which is ADMIT IT, partly, sort of, a whole lot... bad. (Am I repeating myself?)

And then this comes out in how we relate to others in all our relationships, but especially in our spiritual life. Though we may at first have believed we’ve been saved by grace. We come to God knowing we aren’t good enough and enter into communion and abiding in him covered by that grace. Then, we try to prove our worthiness! Which is stupid, because it’s not possible, and it makes Jesus sacrifice pointless.

Oh, and it’s probably the worst, for those of us who have grown up in the church. We’ve been working out our salvation with fear and trembling and discipleship, and service and prayer life and bible study to cover our bad. No, because of all this WORKING, by the time we’re teenagers, we got bored with the cross. On top of that we feel guilty about it, knowing we should feel a different way. Rather than coming to him in relationship and learning with him how to face up to our bad; recognizing it, admitting

I can’t do this without you Jesus,

We instead just did a lot of work!

What did Jesus mean by “take his YOKE?”

[picture of a YOKE]

SKETCH: Would you take a few moments and draw a little sketch of what comes to mind as you think about a yoke. What is the traditional way of understanding what Jesus is talking about?

Here’s something about a yoke, that you may not have known before. It may blow your mind:

Different rabbis had different sets of rules.... A rabbi's set of rules...was really the rabbi's interpretation of how to live the Torah, was called that rabbi's yoke. When you followed a certain rabbi, you were following because you believed that rabbi's set of interpretations were the closest to what God intended through Scriptures. And when you followed that rabbi, you were taking up that rabbi's yoke. [ Velvet Elvis, by Rob Bell, ]

So Jesus offered this new yoke, which he claimed was easy. But in a way, it seems harder. He often began with "you've heard it said" and cited the Old Testament law. Then he followed with "but I say to you." For example, he said, "you've heard it said,... 'Don't murder.' but if you call someone a fool or hate them, you've killed them" (Matt 5:21-22)  ...His teaching encouraged people to hold to a higher standard than mere legalism but also helped them to realize that keeping the law perfectly is an impossible proposition. rest - living in sabbath simplicity (keri wyatt kent)

His yoke is his teaching, his yoke is HIM and he’s bearing the sin, not you...he’s already born it!

You’ve heard this before: 2 Corinthians 5:21

He made him who knew no sin to (what?)

become sin for us,

that we might (what)

become the righteousness of God.

He also said he is

Gentle and Humble.

He has a few words to say to you about that too.

He doesn’t follow the TIGER MOTHER method.

Take my yoke upon you

                   Let me teach you

                   Because I am humble and gentle

This is what I heard growing up, in my wonderful loving Christian Western Moralist Family:

Kimberly! Oh. Kimberly! Shame on you! That’s not nice! Creasmans don’t do ______.  Do the GOOD. [spank]

Take a moment and write down what YOU heard. Did you have a tiger mother or father? Or teacher. You’ve got a few of those tapes always playing in your mind. What did they say? We’re going to try to start reprogramming tonght.

This is Gospel Parenting.

This is what Jesus says to you:

Kimberly, Dawn, Namiko, Aaron. You are a failure. I love you, but on your own, you are a failure. You’ve done it again, wandered off. But you need me. You can’t do it. Stop. Give up. Abide.

Here’s grace. Here’s me. Be filled with me. here’s my yoke, It’s easy because it’s mine. Because it’s me and I bear the weight of your bad on my shoulders. Wear my yoke and let’s go on a journey. You have no idea what kind of journey I’m going to take you on. But first you must open your heart to me. Search your heart. Before we go on adventures together, first we must go down. I’m going to take you down Kimberly...and see your crap. Kimberly, you know it stinks and you will want to hide it, or run. I promise you Kimberly, you will get nothing but LOVE from me as we go down there and sit in it so that you can really know what it is and really know I love you no matter what it smells like or how much there is.

You don’t believe it. Guilt and shame has made you believe that no one will love you in the deep honesty of your bad. But I do.

It may take you some time to reprogram. But take my yoke. I will teach you. I am gentle and humble. If you draw near to me and let me help you, it will actually be easy. Would you like to try?

In early childhood we should have been modeled unconditional sacrificial love. Firm standards for right and wrong, surely, but with a foundation of

I AM HERE FOR YOU AND I LOVE YOU

NO MATTER WHAT YOU HAVE OR HAVEN’T DONE.

My guess is you didn’t get that.

As I work on being this kind of parent to my sons, I’ve started reading books about ADHD. One which has become a kind of Bible for me lately: UNDERSTANDING ADHD is written by Daniel Amen. People with ADHD have what he calls “ANTS” Automatic Negative Thoughts - condemning thoughts that come into your head that you’ve heard since childhood in addition to other voices of authority who may have confirmed your worthlessness and hopelessness.

There are some things that Psychologists do to help in reprogramming clients who are victims of these Automatic Negative Thoughts.

As Christians, we can reprogram with breath prayers. Have you heard of “breath prayers?” Early church fathers...I can’t remember who...they practiced these simple statements of truth or desire or worship like a mantra. A phrase that can be focuses on for a period of time and said in a single breath. Here’s a sample of a breath prayer:

Lord, show me how to wear your yoke.

Lord, show me how to wear your yoke.

Here’s another one.

Lord, help me give up on this project of trying to be good enough.

I present myself, and my bad to you. Transform me by your love.

Let’s take a few moments for you to think of one that you like. One that suits you and you’d like to start to practice. Let the Holy Spirit lead you in what breath prayer you could start praying. I’m comfortable with silence...

In the Bible we are told to “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling...”

Isn’t that what it says in 1Peter? You know what comes after that part?

“for it is GOD WHO WORKS IN YOU according to his divine purpose & pleasure.”

It’s GOD who does the work with you as you come to him and abide in him. I’d like you to exchange the parenting statements -- your “tapes” for these breath prayers.

Here’s one last passage from Scripture that I want to read. You’ll hear it in a new light, now that you’re realizing a new perspective on relationally, WITH HIM, doing good.

It’s from Titus 3

5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. 8 This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. These things are excellent and profitable for everyone.

We have a new perspective on what we’re doing and why we’re devoted to doing good. It’s doing good in relationship WITH HIM not FOR HIM. Come to him and let him be part of the decisions, the reactions, the work, the frustrations, the mundane. Have him do it with you and help you decide, DO I REALLY HAVE TO DO THIS? or is there something else more important you want me to be doing?

Prayer: The last thing we’ll do tonight is spend some time praying together. Because this is kind of personal, I’d like you to find someone you know to pray with. Groups of 2 or 3 would be good. You can pray about whatever the Spirit leads you to pray for. What we’ve been thinking about just now, or something else that’s on your mind and heart. You can pray for one another, or other artists. All I ask is that you don’t take the time to TALK about your prayer requests. Just go to God, together in prayer.