No Room For The Devil

¹“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30). Whenever we have a choice to make, especially a choice with significant consequences, we can bet that the Lord is going to be there to try and influence us to make the right choice and the devil is going to be there to try and influence us to make the wrong choice. In popular culture such crossroads are often depicted fancifully with a little angel perched on one shoulder and a little devil perched on the other. It seems no matter how often we give heed to the shoulder angel, the shoulder devil stands his ground and continues to try to persuade us to wander off the path of righteousness. If only there were a way that we could evict that little devil from off our shoulder. As it turns out, the solution is easy. Jesus invites us to take His yoke upon us. The yoke covers up both of our shoulders. When we take upon ourselves the Savior's yoke and are committed to doing His work with all of our heart, we've got no time and no room for anything on our shoulders except that yoke. This is the rest that comes from taking upon us Christ's yoke. We no longer need to be confused and exhausted as our shoulder angel and shoulder devil debate and bicker over which path we should take. As long as we keep ourselves in that yoke then we will always be making the right choice because Christ is in the yoke with us and He, unlike us a lot of the time, knows exactly where He's going. I hope that we will all give place no more for the enemy of our soul and the best way to do that is to cover up his favorite spot on our shoulder with the yoke of Jesus Christ. They say that idle hands, or shoulders, are the devil's play things, but if we put our shoulder to the wheel and push along and become fully engaged in the work of the Lord, then we are giving the devil nothing to work or to play with. Let us all stay yoked to Christ so that our choices become so much simpler and easier.