Check Your Yoke

Yokes can be heavy or light, positive or negative based on what the yoke is or what you are yoked with.  Jesus promises that His yoke is easy and His burden is light in Matthew 11:30.  But there are times when we dot not choose that easy, light yoke and instead choose the yoke of the world.
As promised, we had an 'awesome' example in our house of being yoked together and how that can take us over. If you have read my blog frequently you have probably gotten the impression that my son, Cole, tends to be an introspective and sensitive boy. He loves God and has some deep thoughts and ideas about his own walk.

Well, this boy also LOVES handball. He had, notice past tense, a goal of playing as much handball at school as possible while honing his skills on a wall at our house after school hours. Recently, by way of another mother, I found out that Cole had been in the vice-principal's office. Whoa is right! At Cole's school as it was at mine, the principal's office equals good and the vice-principal's office equals bad. The story was shocking to me, not only had he gotten in trouble but he had neglected to tell me about it. So here's what ensued...

Cole had taken to playing handball with a group of boys that had, shall we say, a different spirit and mode of behavior that Cole has previously exhibited, but, they played some good handball. The words this group were exchanging on the handball court were inappropriate and flew in the face of what should be exchanged at a Christian school.  After cooling my jets, I talked to Cole.

Once I got the story from him I asked, "How did it feel when Joey (code name) called you a ____?"  He said, "It was fine."  Ugh!  Cole had become desensitized to the behavior of these boys and had joined in and taken on the actions of the group. Talk about being yoked and rooted! God provided an amazing situation to have a conversation about how easily Cole had transformed from what we know him to be into something foreign to those of us that live with him. Then together we came up with a remediation solution.

I share all this because I desire that you, as biblical parents, would continue to talk to your kids about their priorities. What is our goal anyway as parents? How can we point them to God and have them listen for His voice? Our yoke and roots influence our actions and behavior. God provides the content in His word and the situations in our lives to follow Him, but do we? Or do we become like the group? We just have to seek, watch, and take each moment as an opportunity. What a privilege that God tagged Cole and taught him such a valuable lesson. I pray the same for your kids.

By His Grace