Use the word yoke in general conversation in the US, and you’ll probably get more than a few eyebrow raises and head scratches.
Jeff Foxworthy might joke that a yoke is the southern pronunciation of that yellow blob in the middle of an egg. But a yoke is a wooden frame fitted across the shoulders of two animals to keep them together and split the work burden. It can also be a long stick shouldered by a person and used to carry buckets of water for long distances.
Yoked animals are often raised together, graze in the same pasture, and train together to work as a team. They spend their lives together and get to know each other, which creates a level of trust. They sense each will do their part when the time for work comes.
In the Bible, the Greek word for yoke is zugos and comes from the root word meaning “to join.” According to The New Strong’s Expanded Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, it is a coupling “of submission to authority; of Christ’s yoke not simply imparted by Him but shared with Him.”
When we become Christians, we are yoked to Jesus. But if we don’t spend time with Him, our teamwork suffers. We will doubt His good plans for us, question His leadership, and often worry His yoke will be too great to bear.
But we can trust Christ when He says His yoke is easy and His burden light. He will share and even take on the heaviest parts of the burdens He may call us to shoulder. We may not feel Him as we walk through those difficult times. But if we remain yoked to Him through prayer, Bible study, and trust, we’ll see He was beside us through those seasons, supporting and guiding our every step and shouldering the heaviest load.
What steps could you take to better yoke yourself to Christ?
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com.)
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Felicia achieved master's degrees in healthcare administration and Speech-Language Pathology but has written since childhood and dreamed of authoring books that teach and inspire others. An award-winning fiction and non-fiction freelance writer, she is the past president of the Destin chapter of Word Weavers International and a member of the American Christian Fiction Writers Association. Her radio devotional, Build Faith for the Journey, airs Saturdays on Christian Mix 106. As a child, Felicia lived in Kansas, Texas, and Louisiana before her family settled on a horse and cattle farm in Kentucky. For the past ten years, though, she soaked up the Florida sun. But then God moved her once again. This time out of the South and into the mountains of Colorado. When she’s not glued to her laptop, Felicia enjoys hiking, meandering with her twelve-year-old Frenchie, and looking forward to the next story.