Unequal Yoke Part I.

The author of this post is Mr Tamas Mike, a Hungarian preacher. With his permission the ReThinkers blogger's translated it into English. This preaching is available to listen through the H.E.V. church's homepage, but of course just in Hungarian language.

"Hi Everybody,

I would like to start with a musical concept, then we will start the preaching. The word symphony, how the Greek use it, συμφωνία /sumphonia/, means resonance, jingle, cooperation. This is my favorite spiritual experience, confirmation. You know when Paul says that "As the scripture say, 'The facts of every case must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses'." Therefore an unmentioned, (but he's in the corner of my eyes), person has 'pushed' me into one particular topic for tonight’s preaching. =)

One huge argument, brain-storming started to form on the subject of marriage, divorce, unequal yoke and things like that on a forum, which is unfortunately not ours, but I try to guide the people to that direction. So in this context now, the Holy Spirit brought forth a topic which is many time spoken, and so many times misunderstood. What good is that the confirmation in the subject has happened, the symphony.

Now I will start with the fundamental verse of the „Yoke”  : „At that time” it’s in Matthew 11 (Mat 11:25-30) „At that time Jesus began to say, I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth [and I acknowledge openly and joyfully to Your honor], that You have hidden these things from the wise and clever and learned, and revealed them to babies [to the childish, untaught, and unskilled]. Yes, Father, [I praise You that] such was Your gracious will and good pleasure. All things have been entrusted and delivered to Me by My Father; and no one fully knows and accurately understands the Son except the Father, and no one fully knows and accurately understands the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son deliberately wills to make Him known. Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls.]”

As you can see „ All things have been entrusted and delivered to Me by My Father…No one fully knows the Son except the Father…No one fully knows the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son deliberately wills”. And from that comes „ Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls.]” And how does it continues? Here comes the „Yoke”: „ Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me,” I just love this translation! „ for I am gentle and humble in heart,” It’s not a behavior, it comes from inside! „for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is wholesome (useful, good—not harsh, hard, sharp, or pressing, but comfortable, gracious, and pleasant), and My burden is light and easy to be borne.” I love it so much it’s so heart warming and so many times it goes opposite to the reality.

Cause usually I don’t meet with people when everything goes well in their life. Thanks to God, Yesterday we had got an opportunity to relocate Kristy in Pecs, and that way we could meet up with Emoke and with her husband Szabi, who are well and they are happy and everything is fine with them. And it was so good to be „needless”, but usually that’s not the case. Instead the situation is that I always met with people when there’s a problem in their life. And here Jesus says „Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is wholesome, and My burden is light and easy to be borne.” And therefore the Christians are coming, that this and that’s the problem, one thing or another are not working, I don’t know what to do now, Help me! and then it looks like that this Verse is just not true. No, the Verse IS true. The problem is that we know everything perfectly in theory, and we 'use it', and yes „we take on the Yoke” and everything is 'amazing, and cool'.

And it’s TRUE in certain areas of our life, in OTHER PARTS it’s not working. Therefore you can see some really 'cute' things, like that „piece of facebook”: Miss Lavinia Goldsmith likes „I love Jesus” and 4 other pages. The 4 other pages are: „Band Depression ”, „No music, no life”, „If a man says maybe then you’re f… my friend” and the forth is „The Bible”. This effectively shows in one picture the situation when people are coming to me, and they are telling me that they've got a problem in their life, and believe me that the problem is not with the Yoke, rather with that we've got two different lives.

I try not to have two, but I can calmly put myself into this as well. For everyone it’s a learning curve until you get there in the everyday life and at the workplace and even in whatever situation to be the same. Well in recently I am getting better with it. For example once, my manager got angry and then later he said that „Alright I know that from your perspective” mainly as a psychologist , „It looks totally different, so please tell me what do you think about it”. So sometimes I get into a situation, where somebody says this kind of stuff, but after he reconsiders, and asks for the outside perspective from where everything looks totally different.

How was it? I love it so much : „for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”. This inner peace radiates out, but it can be irritating. Look at that, Peter says in 1 Peter 4:4 „They think it strange that you don’t plunge with them into the same flood of dissoluteness, and so they heap insults on you.” So from one hand we are emitting some really exotic feelings, but on the other hand it can be really irritating for some people. It’s when they’re asking „Why are you so calm?” I got it so many times, „Why are you not angry?”. I always say that I've got something inside, which separates me from all of this, and no matter what’ll happen, I’ll be safe."

What is Love?!?

Nowadays the description for love is just when you fill the emotions rise inside, the flesh and all the desires. But this is not real Love. These are spontaneous healthy symptoms that you are a human being. These are more the physical elements of Love.

To love someone and to be loved from your beloved one of course you need to have these physical attractions.

But your relationship and your marriage won't live for long IF it is based only on the physical and sexual attraction.

Love means SO MUCH MORE than these. Love means, you CARE for your partner MORE than you care for yourself. It means you are LESS SELFISH. You are ABLE TO COMPROMISE.  Love is when you can PUT someone's need BEFORE YOURS.

Love is when you are FAITHFUL to your loved one, no matter how hard it is sometimes. Love is when you love someone WITHOUT ANY EXPECTATION.

You can love someone more easily, If you find your inner peace. If YOU yourself are OK with YOURSELF, and you have reconciled with your background, with your past. If you find your balance in your everyday life. When you find peace in God!

"Let Love and Faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart." /Proverbs 3:3/

Word's of a Catholic Priest

Destructive emotion or love?!

"Imagine, that there is a destructive emotion inside you. You have the feeling that a great injustice had been made against you. What is your desire now? 'To get revenge! S/He must die who caused me this!' Don't stop here! Alright, you wish for them to brake their neck. But is there another desire underneath this surface? 'Of course I have! I am wishing them to brake their necks because then I could have the releasing feeling that there is justice in the World!' So then your inner desire is to make sure there is justice in this World! If you are sure now, let's have a look, is there another inner desire inside you? 'If I think about it, yes there is! Because what is good if there is justice in the World, but there is none who loves me?!' Then, to be loved, is a stronger inner desire! Everyone must try this out once, because you will have a surprising discovery: Our most awful emotions will turn from negative into positive! There isn't a destructive emotion, if you go after it, which would have not turned into positive from negative after self-examination! It happens always! This is a miracle!! It turns out that in the inner inside of the heart of a human being, there isn't ever negative desires, destructive, terrible passions - there is always wonderfully beautiful, positive desires!! In everyone's heart. This is spellbinding, isn't it?!" /Pal Feri/

Fakebook

Less or more

You won't be less or more if you are not receiving enough 'likes' on facebook. It's not your real face you show there and you just rarely find your closest friends. Friends who are there for you, when you totally feel like crap.  They encouraging you, 'Hey you my friend, don't you dare give up! I've been there and I've been through but I'm here to help you to bear!

This society tries to force you and me into this materialistic impersonal World. Where you depend on whether the people like you, but mostly they just pretend they are. And until you won't brake out from your bubble world, you will waste your real deal. No offense but you should live in the real world, and make the best out from what you have! And don't say, 'yes maybe on one day, I will be ready', because man you actually living your life NOW, you have to deal with your life and your decisions, to make responsibilities and to make them right. 

To make the right steps will be just harder. It always will appear that you just scroll it in front of you. The truth is that you just have to let it go and to be brave to say 'Hey it was enough'! 

To say NO is perhaps scares you, but trust me it's worth to do.

To find yourself and find the peace beyond will not come from facebook you know.

After every ending there is a beginning

            Thoughts of existence

To help those people whom God brought into your life. To give hope. To be a light. Not to give up. Even though its hard sometimes. Just trust and rely on God. To forgive to those who are not giving you the job. To back out of your past. To say goodbye to your proud. You don't have to be the same as your parents were. To let it go. To forgive to those who you think are better, valuable, more beautiful than you. To have healthy thoughts. To trust in God. Don't let the enemy to turn your thoughts inside out. To be sympathizer. Don't brood over nothingness but instead start to look at the path in front of you. To look into his and her eyes and to understand what comes through them. To be patient. To learn to listen. Not just acting you care for someone, but be there and do it. To listen them, comfort them and love them. To follow the footprints of Christ.

"15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.20 “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, 21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. 22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— 23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." /John 17(NIV)/"

"12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." /Colossians 3(NIV)/"

And for closing

From A to B

         Deep Inside

Dissatisfied, because you want to do something. When you do something, you feel that it's not enough at all, that you should do more. Not good enough. Not high quality. Not enough at all. You walk up and down, you want more. You want to move forward. And when it happens you do not appreciate the things you have achieved, you start to concentrate again on your future. 'I wish I could be there, where I want to be!' You longing for it. Your life is filled with this longing. When you don't have a relationship, you desire to have one. When you are in a relationship, after a while, you long for more. You want to quit. You want something new. You hope that the new will be better. You are longing for adrenalin which comes with the new. You are longing for that new taste in your mouth. You are longing for a fulfillment, but instead you feel like you are not moving at all.

Impatient, want to get everything right away. You don't appreciate what you  already have. You act like a kid who goes crazy for a toy in the next two minutes and then throws it away, because you have had enough of it. You are bored. You really want to do something interesting and unique. You want some adventure, some pleasure. You miss something and can't figure out what it is exactly. Always, when you get something, you are disappointed, because you realize that it's not what you have been longing for. You cannot explain yourself, you don't know what  you are longing for. You start to work on this, on that, but you never finish with any of them. Because you get bored very quickly. You aren't really a persistent person. You want to be recognized.  You aren't willing to do any work, which doesn't produce a quick and spectacular result. You are more than happy to work for others as long as it helps you to move forward. When you succeed, you can't let yourself to be happy because you don't feel like it was your success. You don't like to take the lead. If you do take the lead, then you try to escape from the problems, and you rather quit.

Wistfulness. Something incomprehensible and unfathomable keeps yawning in your soul. You are unable to fill it up. You feel like the more you do, the emptier you become. Constant hunger. Rumbling spiritual-starving, uncomfortable feeling. You don't know how to fill it up. You just pass by the entity. You just eat some instant food, but you don't like it at all. You don't have patience and time to make a quality food and then to eat it with a delight. You are dissatisfied with your situation. You are indignant, because you feel like that everyone else lives better though they don't deserve it, but you.

Your character of your religion is filled with yearning prayers. Pretentious, few thanksgiving, a lot of requests. You don't accept what God gives to you. You long for other things, what you didn't get and you feel like God didn't listen to your prayers. You are crying. You don't understand what is wrong.

With difficulty you realize, that you should remain silent for a bit. To listen without expectations. Dwell on the stories. To enjoy the taste of a delicious food. To rejoice in the sunshine and the stars. Indulge yourself into Bible reading. For a while not to do something, just to listen and feel. To mourn yourself. To clear yourself and to see those who are longing for a hug. With difficulty but you realize, that you can be satisfied, because you will get it. That you can be patient, because you will receive it. And you can be inactive, because you are not alone in the service. You can be just yourself.

Are you valuable at all?!?

Youth and self-respect: the hesitant waving of your over- and underestimation. Like a roller coaster, sometimes incredible cliffs, sometimes incredible bumps - maybe that's how I can shortly describe how I feel sometimes. I know, If you would say this out loud, immediately would come two older (and of course wiser) men and they would enlighten you, how worthy you are or you aren't. You will obviously think that the best is, If you listen to what they say, because they should know it better than you. Maybe it had happened with you already, that you listened to them, and after a while you just realized, that they already categorized you in a higher or lower level on the self-respecting scale. You have been naive, you believed that you are a genius, meanwhile other peoples' opinion prevented you from becoming mature. Maybe they said you are not gifted, you believed them and that made you inadequate. Who knows how valuable you are for real?!?

Let's have our next step. I'm quite sure that you have noticed it as well, that everyone has a different opinion about you. If you are a controverted person, just like me, then possibly it has already happened that some "Master Yoda" in your life saw you in different ways. So then you are trying to compare yourself, and at the end, you totally mess up, 'cause you are trying to meet the requirements. 'A bruised reed will he not break, and a dimly burning wick will he not quench', and something like this crosses your mind, while you don't really know who you are anymore. Mostly a bruised reed and dimly burning wick. You are worthless.

'Cause how could be something worthy of note, when no one says an opinion clearly and arguably about it, that 'YES, You are Mr Smith Something, are you valuable at all?!' Please someone name me on my name, and tell me who I am!

"Have no fear, for I have taken up your cause; naming you by your name, I have made you mine. When you go through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not go over you: when you go through fire, you will not be burned; and the flame will have no power over you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your saviour; I have given Egypt as a price for you, Ethiopia and Seba for you. Because of your value in my eyes, you have been honoured, and loved by me; so I will give men for you, and peoples for your life." /Isaiah 43.1-4/"