What is so hard?

Prov 13:15 Good understanding giveth favour: but the way of transgressors is hard.

I hear from my own mouth and certainly from many around me how hard they find where they are or what they are doing. It is a very common phrase; I had a hard day/time/issue. I know that most just have come to use the word to express some fatigue or difficulty that they are going through, but it is good to consider dispensing with this phrasing in the life of the believer.

Here is what Jesus has to say:

Matt 11:28 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.

Hebrews has an admonition to know and receive the rest of God. Paul gives an example of those who have not entered into that rest. They did not know his ways, nor did they allow their hearts to be softened;

Heb 3:7 Wherefore (as the Holy Ghost saith, To day if ye will hear his voice, 8 Harden not your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: 9 When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. 10 Wherefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, They do alway err in their heart; and they have not known my ways. 11 So I sware in my wrath, They shall not enter into my rest.)

We are warned again to not come short of that rest.

Heb 4:1 Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.

Heb 4:10 For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. 11 Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.

We can see a further explanation of the rest looking back to the prophecy of Isaiah:

Isa 28:11 For with stammering lips and another tongue

will he speak to this people.

12 To whom he said,

This is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest;

and this is the refreshing: yet they would not hear.

The sabbath, the rest, is a delight for the people of God. God has given the gift of the Holy Ghost, and the flow of the spirit to those who will cease from their own labours and find the place of Joy, Peace and Love the has been provided in Christ Jesus. Cease from your labours, put down your tools of trying to make of yourself something for men to see, let the yoke of Jesus enfold you and trust to the love of God to keep you.

There is so much to say about this subject, the rest of God, the Yoke of Jesus, but let us start with ceasing to identify with the way of the transgressor, that is what is hard.