Two last things… He said: “Take My yoke on you”.
That's something we can do. We can choose to come to Him or not; and we can take the yoke. The yoke is the teaching and lifestyle; and it means following His lifestyle.
Jesus was surrounded by turmoil. He was surrounded by people with agendas. He was surrounded by hostility. He was surrounded by people - even betrayers and traitors next to Him. He was surrounded by pressures and expectations - but He never lost His peace.
He always remained at peace, even when His friends pressured Him, he remained at peace. How did He remain at peace?
He says: “Take My yoke”; which means: to follow His lifestyle.
Use Him as your model – ask: what would Jesus do in this situation? How would Jesus handle this situation? To take the yoke on - how did Jesus handle it?
He just listened to what the Father had to say. So how did Jesus handle all that stress?
1) He just refused to be dominated by it; and
2) He just began to listen: “Father, what do You want Me to do”?
The Lord was speaking to me about some stuff earlier on in the year (and in this time away) - then He required me to do it; and so the first meeting was great. I had 10 meetings at night time, plus 2 training sessions in a day, every day.
These 10 meetings are power evangelism meetings. I got one message, the first night; but that was it! I thought: that's great, I got a message, praise God.
The next night came - no message. I sweated and sweated and sweated. There was no rest for me then!
I don't want to get up in front and speak - I've come all this way, and there's no message! This is horrible Jesus - HELP! So there was a little bit of stress and tension…
Then I just stopped and said: look, I need to get my eyes back on Jesus; so I got my eyes back on Him - and then an idea suddenly came to mind:
I should think of some altar calls, write some altar calls. I wrote an altar call down, then I wrote another one, then I had a whole list of them. I thought oh, perhaps Jesus just wants me to do altar calls tonight - that's a bit different.
I got up there, and the very first altar call I'd written - there was a woman had a testimony on that very issue!
I never even got to do all the other altar calls that night, because it was just the one she gave the testimony on - was the one I'd written down, was the one that everybody came up and got – and there was a massive deliverance. We were busy all night!
There was no time to preach a message. Oh, I fitted in a bit of preaching, did a 5-minute job, and all these people came up and got saved - but God moved. The same thing happened every night.
I had to learn to Rest! I didn't like it, I can tell you; but you've got to learn to rest. It's something you have to learn to do: learn to rest in Him – “take my yoke”. Loss of peace is a signal you've got your eyes off Him.
The final thing is: “Learn from Me”.
Here's a simple thing: ask Him questions. Ask the Lord questions. Learning, from a Hebrew point of view, was asking questions, listening, gaining insight, gaining revelation, gaining wisdom for life. You've got to ask the questions.
If you ask God good questions when you're in difficulty… what would that look like?
If you've got distress, something's gone wrong: “Lord, I've lost my peace. Lord, I just re-centre my life back on You. I push this thing at Your feet, because it's a care that's distracting me.”
You just begin to worship Him, until you come to a place of just ‘at rest’. Then: “Lord, I want to learn from You, how do I handle this thing. What do I do? What do I need to learn in this situation?”
Don't ask WHY! That's not going to work - He won't answer that one. He'll answer the other questions - the ones where you learn. Those ones He'll always answer - then be quiet to hear His replies.
It may come immediately to your heart and spirit. You may have a thought come to your mind, or you may just be reading the word of God, and the insight comes.