Relief From Our Burdens

Are we weak and heavy laden, cumbered with a load of care? Precious Saviour, still our refuge—take it to the Lord in prayer!

These words come from the famous hymn, ‘What a friend we have in Jesus,’ and they bring us great hope as we feel the burden of life.

The words come from Jesus’ famous ‘comfortable’ words from Matthew chapter 11, verse 28 where he says:

Matt. 11:28    Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

These words bring hope to the hopeless and help us in our helplessness, for they speak to all of us who find it impossibly hard to deal with our sins and failures.

But originally, Jesus was speaking to the lost sheep of Israel, who were overcome with the burdens of keeping hundreds of rules, regulations and traditions.

They carried the burden of keeping the law… but today we carry the burden of performance anxiety.

By nature, we all feel we need to perform well to impress God, so that we will survive judgement day.

It’s a burden that will crush us, and so Jesus offers ‘rest’.

He offers rest that is about peace with God, and we get this ‘rest’ as a gift from Jesus.

As we follow Jesus, we find rest for our souls that brings us relief from the burden of our sins.

And this is the greatest relief we could ask for from the heavy burden of guilt and sin.

JODIE McNEILL