How Heavy is Your Burden?

Do you think living the Christian life is hard? Do you often feel burdened down? Why do we become so burdened and overwhelmed?
I was listening to chapel messages and reading some verses and felt slightly convicted about something. Throughout our Christian life we go through times where we feel so burdened down. But do we realize that it’s our own fault? We cause ourselves to bear those burdens. Jesus tells us that the Christian life isn’t hard in Matt. 11:28-30, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 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.”
Our burdens are self-inflicted. Jesus says to bring them to Him and he will give us rest, not that He’ll take it away. We are to learn of Christ, learn how to leave the worry with Him, worrying is a sin. When we cast out the sin (worrying, complaining, selfishness, ect…) in our life that is connected to that burden, we can then learn how to carry the light burden. Jesus says “my yoke is easy and my burden is light”. Living the Christian life isn’t hard, unless we are trying to live it with sin at the same time.
Christ tells us to take His yoke upon us and learn, a yoke is used to guide animals to get work accomplished. The master in charge of the animals decides on how much the animal should pull and how much they can handle. So does the Father for us, He knows what burdens we can handle when we are yoked. The verse tells us that Jesus’ yoke is easy, and the “burden is light”.
We know we are going to have a burden to carry, Christ tells us to “take up his (your) cross, and follow me.”(Mk. 8:34) A cross is going to weigh something, but it doesn’t have to overwhelm us and be hard, because the “burden is light”. Choose to carry your burden, your cross, without dragging that excess weight of sin attached to the burden. Think of when we are serving Christ like we know we should, how burdened down do we feel? Now think of when we take upon ourselves the care of running our own life and doing what we want. Which makes you happier?
How heavy is your burden right now? Do you need to drop some excess weight?