“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matthew 11:28 -30
I was watching a rerun of “Friends” the other night where Monica faced her addiction to perfectionism. After coming home to find that Rachel had cleaned the apartment and moved a foot stool Monica became frantic. She tried to hide her anxiety but to no avail. When confronted about her perfectionism she denied it. Then her friends challenged her to leave things out of place. She gladly accepted their challenge.
In the next scene she is preparing to go to bed and her shoes were in the living room. When asked about them she said she had no problem leaving them there overnight. Then the scene changed to her bedroom where she was in bed and wrestling with the thought of leaving the shoes out. She was having a conversation with herself about it. While the episode was hilarious the reality of a person struggling with perfectionism was not.
While being addicted to perfectionism only affects a small percentage of people, all of us are yoked to perfectionism in some area of life, and experience the same weight of burden that the addict experiences. Whether it is trying to be the perfect wife, mother, friend, employer, employee, Christian, volunteer, etc., we all struggle with trying to be perfect at some point. Being yoked to the burden of perfectionism weighs us down and causes us to spend a lot of mental energy trying to make sure we don’t fail in life.
I love how intimately God knows us and how He loves us so much that He offers solutions to every problem we face in life. Perfectionism is poison to our soul. In this verse Jesus offers the only antidote for it. He tells us to come to Him, yoke ourselves to Him, and to learn from Him. It says that being intimately yoked to Jesus will provide rest for our souls, which means there is relief from the mental torment that accompanies perfectionism.
Notice what the verse doesn’t say. It doesn’t say that our burdens will be removed! It doesn’t say we won’t have bad days where we make mistakes or wound someone with our words. It doesn’t say our lives will be perfect if we yoke ourselves to Him. But what it does reveal to us is that when we yoke ourselves to Jesus He will lead us in the direction that leads to rest and peace.
He frees us from the churning anxiety within and we find rest for our weary souls. We will also be able to sleep in peace and not suffer like Monica did when she was wrestling with her thoughts. Isaiah 26:3 confirms this truth. It says, “You will guard him and keep him in perfect and constant peace whose mind [both its inclination and its character] is stayed on You, because he commits himself to You, leans on You, and hopes confidently in You.” AMP
If you find yourself being yoked to perfectionism take time out and make a conscious decision to yoke yourself to Jesus. As a believer Christ lives and dwells in us but we are still given free will, and have to make the decision to choose His ways over our ways. A yoke is something that can be put on and taken off, just like the yoke of oxen, so this is a daily exercise of faith. You might be wondering how to know if you are yoked to Jesus and the answer is: Whenever you feel weighted down by burdens, chances are you have removed the yoke and need to put it back on. This act of faith will lead you in the right direction to peace and rest every time.
Prayer: I believe by faith that when I am yoked to you I find rest for my soul. I praise you for being the perfect sacrifice for my imperfection and for unconditionally loving me. I stand in awe at how intimately you know my every need and struggle and I praise you for making a way for me to be in perfect peace, by yoking myself to You. I choose today to consciously yoke myself to you and I release my burdens to you. I gladly take your yoke upon me and I am ready to learn from you. Amen.
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