and the truth will make you free

Do you ever feel like the burden of pain, suffering, and despair that comes with living in this world has immobilized you completely - crushed you under its weight until you can hardly breathe?

I do.

Families have broken apart, bodies have been crippled, lives have ended just in my small sphere of acquaintance - not even considering the terrorism and persecution happening on a daily basis across the globe. It's too much. It's all too much. I can't fall asleep at night for the sick feeling in my stomach, and when my body finally rests my mind is filled with anxious dreams so that I wake up feeling like I've been in battle all night long.

But why?

Doesn't Jesus say, "My yoke is easy and My burden is light"?

How can this be true, when the cross on my back feels like it weighs a ton and the road ahead of me is treacherously narrow and sometimes I'm not even sure I can see Him walking beside me?

Or perhaps I should be asking the more startling question . . . is this thing on my back even His?

Head down, hauling up the hill until it feels like my muscles will give out, I can't really see what's on my back - I just know it's too heavy, it's too much. I can't see Him pulling next to me and I certainly can't see the Father of Lies prowling behind me, throwing new worries, fears, and doubts onto my load when I'm too exhausted to notice.

I can't see that I'm not carrying a cross at all, but am down on all fours like a beast of burden, harnessed with blinders and straining against a wagonload of lies.

We forget that the prerequisite to the rest and ease of Christ's yoke is to come to Him - to come into the light, to bring the lies into the presence of the Truth that has the power to destroy them.

If I have been plagued by worry and crushed by fear, then I have believed that God is no longer sovereign over this world; that He doesn't love me as much as I love myself; that He is either unaware of or disinterested in my pain. I have listened to the whispers that ask, "Did God really say....?" and have bitten the poisoned fruit. I have rejected the sufficiency of the character of my God, chosen captivity over freedom and lies over truth and darkness over light.

So Jesus was saying to those Jews who had believed in Him, "If you continue in My word, then you are truly disciples of Mine; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."
John 8:31-32

Pain is a byproduct of the curse of sin, and there is no complete escape from either one until Creation is made new. But there is freedom from the weight of both - only in the truth, only in who God is.

Only in the truth that God is sovereign.

That He is active and invested in His Creation.

That His love is faithful - it will never let me go.

That His grace is complete and His justice is perfect.

That He is good, all the time.

The truth breaks the chains that bind me to that death-trap burden of Satan's lies, and sets me free - free to see myself as God says that I am, free to see God has He says that He is, and free to understand every difficult circumstance of life through that lens.

If Your law had not been my delight, then I would have perished in my affliction. . . . Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and Your law is truth. Trouble and anguish have come upon me, yet Your commandments are my delight. . . . Those who love Your law have great peace, and nothing causes them to stumble.
Psalm 119:92, 142-143, 165