“From the Heart” teaching by Drs. Rodney & Adonica Howard-Browne.

Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30 KJV

Religious history has portrayed Jesus Christ as a skinny, pale-faced shepherd with a lamb under His arm and Elizabethan English coming out of His mouth. The connotation is that He is weak, but that could not be further from the truth. The Bible says that people marveled at the authority with which He spoke. Luke 4:32 AMP says that, “they were amazed at His teaching, for His word was with authority and ability and weight and power.” People were healed as He spoke the word to them. He also commanded demons to come out and they did. He was powerfully anointed, commanding respect wherever He went. They tried to kill Him before His time and could not. Jesus was not weak. He was meek – humble, lowly, and gentle. Meek means: enduring injury with patience and without resentment. Jesus did exactly that – He endured the shame, humiliation, agony, and indignity of the cross for every one of us!

Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3 He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.

4 Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5 But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

7 He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth. 8 He was taken from prison and from judgment, And who will declare His generation? For He was cut off from the land of the living; For the transgressions of My people He was stricken. 9 And they made His grave with the wicked –But with the rich at His death, Because He had done no violence, Nor was any deceit in His mouth.

10 Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief. When You make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, And the pleasure of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. 11 He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied. By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many, For He shall bear their iniquities. 12 Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great, And He shall divide the spoil with the strong, Because He poured out His soul unto death, And He was numbered with the transgressors, And He bore the sin of many, And made intercession for the transgressors. Isaiah 53:1-12 NKJV

Jesus went meekly to the cross. He endured the injury and shame with patience and without resentment. He could have called ten thousand angels to His aid, but He chose to die alone – for you and me. That takes a man of powerful character. He did it because, by faith, He saw the final outcome! He saw you and me. He saw us in Him as He died and was resurrected. He saw the joy of our resurrection – our redemption and restoration into the family and kingdom of God! You and I are His joy and His prize!

Therefore then, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses [who have borne testimony to the Truth], let us strip off and throw aside every encumbrance (unnecessary weight) and that sin which so readily (deftly and cleverly) clings to and entangles us, and let us run with patient endurance and steady and active persistence the appointed course of the race that is set before us, 2 Looking away [from all that will distract] to Jesus, Who is the Leader and the Source of our faith [giving the first incentive for our belief] and is also its Finisher [bringing it to maturity and perfection]. He, for the joy [of obtaining the prize] that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising and ignoring the shame, and is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Just think of Him Who endured from sinners such grievous opposition and bitter hostility against Himself [reckon up and consider it all in comparison with your trials], so that you may not grow weary or exhausted, losing heart and relaxing and fainting in your minds. Hebrews 12:1-3 AMP