I am the Lord your God, which brought you forth out of the land of Egypt, that you should not be their slaves; and I have broken the bands of your yoke, and made you to upright. Leviticus 26:13

The second yoke I can labor under is 2.) The yoke of slavery.

When ‘yoke’ is used, especially in the O.T., it speaks of slavery or bondage to an oppressor. This passage from Leviticus is one example. The Israelites were not freed from the Egyptians through a revolt, an underground movement, or a rebel who rose up to lead the people. They were powerless against a formidable oppressor. Only God could break the bands of their yoke. Bondage was all they had ever known. It was in their DNA.  Four hundred years of it had characterized the existence of the many generations before them.

I may not know this kind of slavery but I can be enslaved nonetheless to a bully, a spouse, a sibling, even an aging parent. Someone got the upper hand when I was once in a compromised position.  The relational pattern was set in stone and perhaps I don’t presently have the personal strength to shake up the dynamics. Oh, but God does. He is in me and I need not be a bully in return in order to be freed from their control. There is holy strength in quietness and resolve. There is holy strength in the man or woman who know that they answer to God first. There is holy strength in the person who is confident before a bully because the Lord is on their side.

A yoke of slavery also plagues me when I fail to leave the unholy ways of my family.  At conversion, my allegiance is to be re-defined.  How difficult though to overcome generational yokes. We are shown very early in life that there is the ‘family way of doing things’ and if you want to enjoy its community, you have to stay in step. These unholy legacies don’t just include things like infidelity, anger, alcoholism, addictive behaviors, depression or a pre-disposition to a certain disease.  There are more insidious culprits such as a hatred of men, or women, a despising of the church, and even a racial bigotry between the north and the south, the blacks and the whites, and Christians against non-Christians.

Isaiah said, Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord; Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Isaiah 51:1  The message is clear. I have been shaped by those who raised me. It is imperative that every child of God look closely at their daily choices to see if there is still a yoke to those who put pressure on us to be like them. I am to be more like my Heavenly Father than my earthly one.  My new birth trumps my initial birth.

How do I take off this yoke of slavery?  First, I ask God to expose my ungodly connections and make me willing to align with Jesus.  He will start turning on the light.  Each time I cave and cower, I repent for doing what Jesus would not do. I take new paths of righteousness armed with scripture and the power of the Spirit.  It may result in being out of step with my family of origin.  Am I willing to be the child of God that Jesus would be if He lived my life?  Only grace will enable it.  Only faith will propel it into the future.

Lord, this is the hard and steep path but oh, how blessed I will be to keep in step with You, to walk in Your footprints. Amen

Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven, and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin. Romans 4:7-8

The third yoke that can oppress us is 3.) The yoke of shame.

Every person is born with a sense of shame because of Adam and Eve’s sin. We know we are flawed and are therefore shy before a holy God. The more we add sin to our resume, the more shame grows and the heavier the yoke becomes.

I have fought my own internal battle over the years. I have asked myself repeatedly, “How can I get over what I’ve done? Has Jesus totally forgiven me?” The yoke had me by the throat.

Worshippers in the ancient world knew shame well. They would bring their sacrifices; animals, even newborn babies, to kill at the altar; all because they had a sense that they needed to calm angry gods. Their faith was in the wrong god but their conscience was keen in sensing that there was One higher than them who was just and holy.

Are you living out a life sentence of depression as you rehearse your failures? Does your track record haunt you like a ghost? If you have confessed your sin but still feel guilty, realize that when God forgives, he separates your sin from you. One of the words for ‘forgive’ is to ‘send away’. God took that ‘thing’ for which you repented, took it off of you and put it on Jesus. When you can’t hold your head up, you must remember that you are not your sin.

Satan accuses. People name call. But Jesus calls His forgiven children ‘righteous’. The beautiful names He confers on us form an umbrella under which we live and enjoy peace with God. The names are numerous, each one meaning something beautiful, and it is each one of these that I must rehearse when I am weighed down by shame. Whether people-inflicted or Satan-inflicted, shame need not be my yoke. It was Jesus’ yoke when He died in my place. I am to live like Abraham. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Romans 4:20-21

How do I take off this yoke? Believe God. See yourself standing in the flow of God’s forgiveness and then walk by faith.  Be sure to have a plan. Satan is the perpetual accuser of the brethren. He will come at you again with old tapes. Be ready with scripture. You will have to quote it out loud and be assured that he will flee. Remember, you are forgiven whether you feel like you are or not. Feelings are unreliable but the Word of God is true and abides forever.

For every one who is deciding to walk in forgiveness, by faith, remove the yoke of shame from their shoulders, Jesus. Amen

So this is what the sovereign Lord says: “See, I lay a stone in Zion, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone for a sure foundation; the one who trusts will never be shaken. Isaiah 28:16

Unbelief leads to despair but faith leads to hope. If I do not trust Jesus, I will be unwilling to be yoked to Him. I know in my head that God’s Word is true. I can quote this like I was giving a right answer on a test. Yet inwardly, I can still fight severe unbelief. The battle to trust His Word in the face of what appears to disprove it brings me to a crisis of faith.

Peter said that Jesus can be a rock of offense over whom people stumble. What makes each of us stumble is usually different. For many years, I stumbled over the issue of God’s expectations of me. When I go out to teach, I have a group of intercessors who pray for me. They labor in prayer, some even fast. Now, I would feel the pressure of that and think, “You are now fully equipped, Christine, to teach under God’s anointing and powerful things should happen.” When a group failed to respond like I anticipated, I took that as my failure. I believed that the intercessors did their part, gave me everything I needed for a harvest, so I must have failed mine. See the yoke? I forgot that the harvest is not up to me.

I will be shaken if I believe a lie about God. The journey is steep and I must fight for faith. Unbelief assaults me from two places; my own thoughts and the arrows of an enemy who never stops trying to corrupt my trust and connection to God. What will overcome these inner minefields?

“For the weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world, but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses. We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” 2 Cor. 10:4-5

The weapons? Scripture and the Spirit. The fortresses? Lies that have become entrenched over time and become strongholds. Speculations and every lofty thing? The mindset that I formulate over a lifetime that is ironclad and hard to budge. Only the Word can demolish it and re-write it.

What lie holds you captive? To find the answer, look carefully at the places you consider hopeless. Ask yourself why you believe that? State the lie and form a battle plan with the Word of God. Come at it with sharp arrows of truth ~ asking the Spirit of God to write His Word on your mind and heart. Fight the battle until you begin to know, and feel, the freedom from the yoke of deception.

You and I may temporarily teeter, wrestle like Jacob, but God’s foundation will hold if we take our mutinous thoughts and override them with His word. As long as we wear a yoke of deception, we render ourselves incapable of ever seeing a kingdom outcome. A glorious plot becomes a tragic and that is never what God had planned for His children.

Lord, you know what tempts me to stumble over you. But I’m choosing to believe that the redemption of this pain must be more beautiful than I can imagine. Break the yoke of unbelief. Amen