"Yokes!"

Nahum 1.12-13 NAS

“Thus says the Lord, ‘Though they are at full strength and likewise many, even so, they will be cut off and pass away.

Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no longer. So now, I will break his yoke bar from upon you, and I will tear off your shackles.’”

God uses His enemies to shape the character of those He loves. The book of Nahum is an oracle against Assyria’s capital city Nineveh. The prophecy was first delivered on the threshold of the fall of Assyria’s great empire around 600 B.C. Nahum acknowledged God’s hand in both the affliction suffered by his beloved Judah and her vindication at Assyria’s destruction. According to the prophet, God was behind both the pain and the comfort He sent Judah’s way. He used Assyria to execute wrath upon His people when they were apathetic and too comfortable. 

But things would change…

“Though I have afflicted you, I will afflict you no longer. So now, I will
break [Assyria’s] yoke bar from upon you, and I will tear off your shackles.”

God uses empires, people, and circumstances to comfort and afflict those He loves. I must never make the pursuit of comfort my primary objective. The comfort I create for myself is an illusion that disappears before I can fully enjoy it. It never satisfies the way I imagine it will. When I chase and apprehend the comfortable and easy life, I am disappointed. It leaves me feeling cold, empty, and unfulfilled. The pursuit of comfort is an idol, a false god. 

The greatest and final enemy is death. Death stole my best friend and wife just a little over six years ago. This will be my seventh Christmas in the past twenty-five years without my beloved Adonica. My comfort vanished and my affliction began at 12:14 p.m. on Sunday, August 30th, 2015. I cried non-stop for a full year, and recently wept again while listening to Michael Allen Harrison's rendition Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Adonica and I loved Michael’s music.  

Yet, God is a “God of all comfort, who comforts us in our afflictions so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2nd Corinthians 1.4). Godly comfort is not for my benefit alone. It is bestowed so that it may be offered. It presupposes a familiarity with suffering. My pain of loss and grief has a purpose. Godly comfort can only be given and appreciated by those who have been hurt. I am afflicted so that I might learn to place value on the comfort I receive and then give it to others who need it. I am not the only one who ever loved deeply and lost what matters most. 

I cannot seek and find my own comfort in my dark night of the soul. I need Jesus. It is far wiser to voluntarily wear the “yoke bar” of Christ’s affliction. He alone can “break yoke bar from upon me, tear off my shackles,” and give me the comfort I so desperately need.

“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.”

Jesus, Matthew 11.28-30 NKJV