Jesus Beckons Us

At that time Jesus said, "I praise You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. All things have been handed over to Me by My Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father; nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him. Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." - Matthew 11:25-30.



The word 'Yoga' is derived from the sanskrit word 'Yuj', which means to be yoked by God and come under His rule.

But what has become rampant in the west is: we are NOT putting yogis under Christ, but Christians under yoga. And they themselves are becoming one of them.

You can be yoked by anyone or anything. There is a Yoke of Freewill (Matt11:29) & then there is the yoke of total control. Which yoke are you carrying today?

Read and understand that the former you "take" upon yourself and the later you get possessed by.

Bro. Peter Daniel brought an important verse to light and wrote: 'Yoga is to empty the mind and do the exercise. Please refer to Matt 12:43-45 "When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, 'I will return to the house I left.' When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation."'

When you empty your mind, even evil spirits can yoke you and control you UNAWARES. But it is Christ alone whose yoke you take upon yourself VOLUNTARILY. That is why i believe in Arminianism (which is about freewill), and NOT in Calvinism, which reduces us to puppets.

Prayer is not only the right posture before God but primarily the right attitude before Him. That is why in Christian CULTURE it is right to kneel before God than to merely sit down. The former speaks of humility before God, and the later, of pride. You know them by their fruit.

If someone obtained something through the back door, then that something is of no value. It is but rubbish and will soon be discarded just as the children of Israel discarded even gold & silver as well as man, woman and beast belonging to the Canaanites.

When we embrace the things of the devil/enemies, we become weak before them and are defeated (Joshua 6,7).

The only way you can redeem something is when you throw it in the dustbin. It has to die first in order to be raised! But redeeming Yoga itself is like whitewashing tombs with dead men's bones.

You cannot redeem something that cannot be redeemed. Yoga is dead because, as Bro. Sujay Thomas alludes to: Jesus has already given and continues to give through simple prayer what Yoga promises to the proud but can never deliver. But the DESIRE of getting yoked under God itself is good and can be redeemed.

Someone may suggest Ps46:10 (Cease striving and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.) and use that to support their argument for redeeming yoga.

I can see how Ps 46:10 is related and so are many other things. But why go that route when you have the highway before us? "Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is helpful. Everything is permissible for me, but I will not allow anything to control me" ~ Paul.

A lure for Christians is to accept and "redeem the practice of yoga." We can be die-hard in many ways. The easy route is the truth of the revealed will of God, which is found in the scriptures--the Bible. While we should not outright broad-brush everything like many preachers do to their own loss, we need to understand the culture we live in and should show yogis the superiority of Jesus, the Good News and everything the easy yoke is about. But don't place the heavy yoke of the law of Hindus or Buddhists or Mormons when man has tested these yokes and found them wanting, not just for ease. Jesus came to lift not just the yoke of the Law of Moses but every other yoke out there. He gave us the easy one to carry, letting go of all others. The First Council of Jerusalem, did likewise.

To practice Yoga, in general, is to take upon oneself the yoke of God by means of many asanas/postures. It is the right desire, but the Yoga idol, which is what it has come to be, is the wrong means now. Simple child-like Prayer of faith/trust/belief is the new means. And the YogaAsana, if you will, is kneeling.

John George correctly writes: "So, yoga is not about mental gymnastics. It has a clear purpose of union with the divine. What Yoga promises to deliver is that through the practice of Yoga, the practitioner will be united with God. If that be true, I wonder if Christ died in vain."

However, if we want to redeem Yogis, we need to affirm this Truth: Moksha is theoretically possible through Samsara but after Jesus came, He gives it to us without having to go through it.

Now Hindus believe in Pantheism, that everything is God, so the yoga philosophy may seem as making no distinction between man and God.

Pantheism actually affirms the omnipresence of the Holy Spirit. It is wrong only in degree. For the Holy Spirit does not reside in the gutters of sinful hearts. Satan is a deceiver who gives half truths and deceives gullible people. He takes what is holy and corrupts it with lies. We are actually playing into Satan's ploy when we broad-brush the whole concept of pantheism. Give everything their due. As for self-worship of looking inward, may seem very good at first glance, as it is the Holy Spirit, who comes to indwell us to purify us. 1Cor11:23-34 is all about this introspection. Again, Satan's ploy is to deceive in the same way as i said earlier. Self-worship is deceptive. Self-examination is more accurate.

The martial arts like kung-fu, etc are not dismissed while Yoga is, for the same reason that Koran is dismissed for its Jihadi adherents who quote the Koran for their evil, which is self-evident, and the Bible is not dismissed because the crusaders cannot quote the Bible for their evil.

But i am really amazed by the die-hard mentality of some. Are we not to imitate Jesus, who is inclusive of sinners (even yogis, who pride themselves of reaching out to God, the creator of the universe) and yet so rejecting of sin? Why are we carrying this baggage from our past? When we are even rejecting the very law of Moses on which the Law of Christ is founded, why are we finding it so hard to consider everything as "dung" (Paul) compared to the knowledge of Jesus Christ?

I am not saying the Law of Moses is not perfect. It is weak through the flesh (Rom8:1-3). However, it is this very same Law, which was validated by the rising of Jesus from the dead who kept it, that will need to be surpassed by Christians (Matt5:20).

Why is there a proliferation of Yoga even among Christians:

It boils down to this: it is the simple lack of humility to enter through the narrow gate. It strikes at the very heart and basic understanding of what it means to be Born Again that has been misconceived by many. Check out this article and lets get our basics right first: http://softpill.org/BeBornAgain.htm

But there is a Big Sort going on. So, know this: Real blessedness is not in genealogy but in true yogic spirituality, which is your identity in the Ascended One, who is UNSEEN, not in the Descended One, who is SEEN (cf. Jn20:29). "For what is seen is temporal, but what is unseen is eternal" ~ Apostle Paul.

In conclusion, when people have abandoned reaching for their nose the easy way, all sorts of other ways seem inviting.