Yoke

Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth of the finger, and speaking vanity; (Isaiah 58:9)

Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? (Isaiah 58:6)

So what is a yoke, that we should take it away and break it?

Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things: and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck, until he have destroyed thee. (Deuteronomy 28:48)

A yoke seems to represent enslavement or oppression. On the other hand Jesus has a yoke:

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 11:29-30)

So a yoke represents servanthood or slavery, not necessarily oppression. A slave will be miserable if his master is cruel, but can be very happy if his master is kind. It is a modern misunderstanding of slavery to think that it was always dreaded.
We are naturally slaves of Satan, through our addiction to sin. He is like a drug baron who tempts us to try his lies and when we become addicted to them he makes us pay for them. We pay for Satan's lies through nature catching up: sickness and failure. The best way to avoid this is to quit taking Satan's lies now. But how can we quit taking Satan's lies when we are already addicted? We need to switch from slavery to one drug to slavery to another. We need to our old master to a new one. We cannot be our own master, but if we choose Jesus for our master he will give us freedom to do good however we think best. We need to take Jesus' yoke of bondage, submit to him in all that we do, and thus we will be free from Satan's destructive leadership.

My memorising Matthew 11:29-30 and meditating on it I wish to remind myself that Jesus is my master now. By doing this I anticipate that I will continue to be transformed into his image.