I pray you have a fruitful and fulfilling walk with the Lord. You are called to follow Jesus as his disciple. It’s pretty simple, a disciple is someone who follows a teacher and applies their teachings. Jesus said following his teachings (yoke) is easy, and his burden is light. Yoke and burden are euphemisms for his teachings and the requirements of those teachings. He said it this way.

““Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. “Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. “For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.””

— Matthew 11:28-30 NASB

Jesus isn’t speaking of physical burdens, he was correcting the heavy burden of the system of works that the Pharisees laid on the backs of people. Jesus later rebukes the Pharisees for putting heavy burdens on the shoulders of the people in Matthew 23:4.

The “yoke of the Pharisees” is the burdensome yoke of self-righteousness and legalistic law-keeping. The yoke of Jesus is to love God and love people. The way to walk under that yoke is to renew your mind and put on the new man. As you renew your mind, you allow God’s grace to strengthen and transform you. Easy and light.

BUT you MUST renew your mind. You can not follow Jesus in the power of his spirit, walking in true love, without a renewed mind.

Knowing the written word is one of the best resources to use to renew your mind to how God thinks and what he says about you. But just reading the Bible isn’t powerful, engaging it at a heart level is required for real transformation. In these two sermons, I walk you through the process of reading His word until it becomes alive.

You can’t just read it, you have to sit in it and let it sit in you until your heart grasps something and that spark of life happens. Call it a revelation, call it an experience, call it manifestation, it really doesn’t matter, but without it, the Bible is not much more than history, poetry and doctrine.

Watch part one (How to Receive Revelation) if you haven’t already watched, and then come back to prat two. I walk through Colossians 1 and 2 in these two sermons as an example of how to read the Bible in such a way that it becomes a living word for you.