The Burden Is Light Quotes

“Using religion in an attempt to manipulate God merely distracts us from the goal of our faith, which is to enjoy an intimate relationship with him.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“Jeff Cook writes, “The more I make my life, my well-being, my enlightenment, and my success primary, the farther I step from reality. Thus the hell-bound do not travel downward; they travel inward, cocooning themselves behind a mass of vanity, personal rights, religiosity, and defensiveness. Obsession with self is the defining mark of a disintegrating soul.”10 That’s why people so often change when they become successful. They leave behind friends, spouses, and families that remind them of their past. They distance themselves from people who know what they are really like and who have seen them in moments of weakness and vulnerability.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“The life we long for is not something we discover or invent or declare to be true. The life we long for is something we receive.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“Prideful living is conformity to the image of Satan.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“When we set ourselves up as the judge, we create a relational framework in which others are the accused. This corrupts the love that God has called us to show.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“(1) Jesus was punished that we might be forgiven. (2) Jesus was wounded that we might be healed. (3) Jesus was made sin with our sinfulness that we might become righteous with His righteousness. (4) Jesus died our death that we might share His life. (5) Jesus became poor with our poverty that we might become rich with His riches. (6) Jesus bore our shame that we might share His glory. (7) Jesus endured our rejection that we might have His acceptance as children of God. (8) Jesus became a curse that we might receive a blessing.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“In the Scriptures, the person who uses others for his own glory is Satan. The person who seeks to accomplish things without submitting to the Father’s will is Satan. The person who does good but takes the credit for himself is Satan. This passage brutally confronts the motives in our hearts, and Jesus’s meaning couldn’t be clearer. It is evil to use people for our own glory. It is evil to do good things for bad reasons. It is evil to have influence without intimacy. It is evil to do things in Jesus’s name without Jesus’s compassion. Impact without intimacy is evil.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“One of the real dangers of spiritual life in America today is the possibility of being celebrated as a success while actually being a spiritual failure.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“When we focus on what we can accomplish rather than the people we are called to serve, we become victims of our own ambition, and so do they.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“People were hungry, driven, spiritually ambitious, and willing to do whatever it took to make a difference in the world. This environment attracted incredible leaders and stirred within me a desire to make a difference, to be a part of what God was doing in this generation. However, when my spiritual ambition was integrated into a church that had a vision for greatness, some ungodly things stirred in my soul. My insecurity caused me to feel the need to compete and prove that I had what it took to make it as a leader in the kingdom of God. This desire to prove myself through competition was woven into my foundational understanding of ministry, and it shaped the paradigm of how I could obtain value in the church. You only matter to God if you do great things for God, I thought, and if you really want to do something great, you have to go to a place where that sort of greatness is appreciated. So bearing just two suitcases and a soul full of ambition, I left my life in Australia behind to start a new one in the States. When I got my first job as a youth pastor, the ministry environment was a revelation. In large American churches, where numbers are a key metric, my ambition was rewarded rather than rebuked. I realized that I could and would do anything to help my ministry grow. My arrogance was interpreted as confidence, and the worldly goals I set were cleverly disguised as spiritual-sounding initiatives. And it worked.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“Carl Sagan collected snippets of human experience on a golden record to communicate what life was all about. For him, life on earth was centered on us. Aldrin chose to celebrate the greatest dash ever lived, that of Jesus Christ. He wanted the world to know that in the midst of the pain and heartache, regret and trauma, frustration and anger, a Savior had intervened in the human story.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman says that this overload produces in us a low information-to-action ratio.10 In other words, we become LIARs. We know everything about that which we can do nothing about and almost nothing about that which we can do everything about. We have opinions about politics and doctrine and sports teams and the lives of celebrities, yet we often fail to notice the tension in our spouse’s eyes, learn our neighbors’ names, or see the stress of our coworkers. We know everything but do nothing.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“We often talk about God being absent from our lives, but in this culture of distraction, I wonder if we are the ones absent from him.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“Most of us will not be tempted to deny our faith, but many of us will be so distracted that we settle for a mediocre version of it.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“Another friend works in delivery for UPS. He is often behind schedule and hurried in his job. But he takes the time to learn his customers’ names and stories and serves them in profoundly thoughtful ways. He gives cards on birthdays and Starbucks cards to celebrate children’s graduations, and he offers prayer whenever people ask. In the kingdom of God, people will be lovers of others.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“Pride is not thinking too much of myself; pride is thinking of myself far too much.”7 This posture of the heart removes God from the throne, relegating him to a supporting role in our story. This pride sees not just our culture but also our faith as a tool for self-fulfillment.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“By 2006 1 out of 4 college students agreed with the majority of the items on a standard measure of narcissistic traits.”4 Pride makes us reflect on our own image in our heads all the time. And as Paul reminds us, “There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“Narcissus’s fixation on himself prevented him from connecting with and loving anyone or anything else. Today people aren’t looking at their image in the water; they are drowning in their screens.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“Author David Brooks notes the rise of pride in his book The Road to Character. Brooks contrasts the increase in the sense of self-importance between emerging generations and those that have gone before us. “Between 1948 and 1954, psychologists asked more than 10,000 adolescents whether they considered themselves to be a very important person. At that point, 12 percent said yes. The same question was revisited in 1989, and this time it wasn’t 12 percent who considered themselves very important, it was 80 percent of boys and 77 percent of girls.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“Our culture is riddled with control mechanisms that facilitate this idolatry. Some use money as an umbrella of control. Money creates space, comfort, and distance between the challenges and annoyances of life. It creates an illusory blanket of security around our place and position in the world. Others use power to control. They work toward positions of influence and authority so that they create a safe distance between themselves and threats to the ego or emotions. Others use sexuality to control people, knowing that beauty or desire can be a mesmerizing, even coercive force that keeps others addicted to us. Some use words to control, verbally adjusting others’ self-perception and identity to keep them in line. Some use guilt and shame, some obligation. The list of tools we deploy to manage the people and outcomes of our lives is almost endless.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“To many of us, the world is a terrifying place, and we are looking for every advantage possible to block out the fear, vulnerability, and harm that can rob us of what we desire. And what could be better than having God on our side and getting him to do what we want?”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“We were taught as teenagers that if we abstain from promiscuity, God will give us great sex lives and stable marriages. We have been taught that tithing, giving God a tenth of our income, will fend off financial disaster and bring in blessing. If we live with integrity and operate according to biblical principles in the workplace, we can advance and safeguard our careers.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“a fast from comparison and a feast on biblical identity could move your life into a place of freedom and delight. You would be more present to those you love and begin to notice things happening around you. You would be able to celebrate the success of others and delight in their favor rather than feeling like you were being overlooked or diminished in some way.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“Rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.”*6 Peter, free from the curse of comparison, urges those under his care to remove the very things he once wrestled with.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“If we fail to contrast the long arc of eternity with the urgency of the moment, we lose perspective and feel the need to cram eternal joy into momentary fulfillment.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success

“Obedience can happen in a moment, but surrender is the posture of a lifetime.”
― Jon Tyson, The Burden Is Light: Liberating Your Life from the Tyranny of Performance and Success