Restful?
Refreshing? Haha yea right!
From the shopping melee that started on Thanksgiving this year, to the cooking and entertaining, to the attending of parties; Christmas has become a very hectic time of year. Once you reach a certain age, I am pretty sure that everyone prefers Thanksgiving (otherwise known as Black Friday Eve) over Christmas, because with Thanksgiving you just eat and hang out with family. Not nearly all the drama and craziness, not to mention expense, that goes along with Christmas.
Busyness and anxiety seem to rule our society and not just around Christmas time. I read recently that the average high school student today has the same anxiety level as the average mental patient did in the 1950s. That's crazy to think about! pun intended.
But seriously we are a culture on the go! Between work, children's activities, church and other commitments people are run ragged. Think about the last time you actually sat quietly for an hour. When was it?
I bet it was either in class, church or when you were sleeping. And even then we try to multitask (i.e. sleeping in church).
Even vacations, which are suppose to be restful, can be busy and stressful. I just got back from spending 11 days in California. And even in the 80 degree winter weather out there, there was no time for rest, relaxation or reflection.
In fact, the most restful time of the whole 10 days was surfing. An activity that includes having cold waves pound my head, huffing and puffing because I am so out of shape, and trying not to get caught on the inside or in the rip current. Though you may have never surfed in your life, I am willing to bet you would rather try to brave the Pacific Ocean on a surfboard than Walmart on Christmas Eve. Which I also did, and that is a story for another time, but lets just say that it looked like Baghdad after Shock and Awe.
But rest is so important... even the world knows it... After combing through tons of articles online about rest and dealing with anxiety, I found some common themes that emerged. The first being the obvious: a good way to deal with anxiety is to rest. duh!
But how does one rest? The world seems to think in order to rest we either need to remove "unnecessary" things from our hectic schedules or add things to them.
The idea of adding things to my schedule increases my anxiety immediately, especially if that thing is Yoga (an all to often addition suggested by many articles). The idea of putting on Yoga pants is anything but restful.
And though removing "unnecessary" things seems like a great idea, in reality, things are on our schedule because we have deemed them necessary. Thus, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to remove anything from our schedules.
Though we may see resting as a pipe dream we are only able to achieve every once in a while, it is a command of Scripture and vital to our overall spiritual health, not to mention our physical health.
In the book of Matthew, Chapter 11, After rebuking the Pharisees, Jesus prays, thanking the Father for revealing himself to the "little children", and then further reveals the heart of the Father, starting in verse 28.
He says, "Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, 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."
How do we, in this culture of do more, try harder, go, go, go; find rest?
This is what I love about Scripture. It isn't some rule book that we try to interpret and live by. No, we let the Bible interpret us, read us, and help us do what it says. For in these little verses we find how we can rest, when the whole world is laying burden's on us that neither they, nor their fore-father's could bear.
Christ, in this passage tells us how to find rest. First he says, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden"
This cry of our Lord is repeated constantly in Scripture. The Spirit says through the prophet Isaiah "Come, everyone who thirsts, to the waters! Come, he who has no money, buy, and eat! Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." (Isaiah 55:1)
God wants those who can't help themselves to come to him...
My brothers and sisters, are you weary and heavy laden?
Come to Christ. Come to him with open hands and an open heart. Many people come to Christ for salvation and then venture off as if they can do everything else themselves. No! Come to Christ and stay there and let his joy and love warm your soul.
The Psalmist in Psalm 127 insists that without the Lord, everything we do is in vain. He says
"Unless the LORD builds the house,
they labor in vain who build it.
Unless the LORD watches over the city,
the watchman guards it in vain.
It is vain for you to rise up early,
to stay up late,
eating the bread of toil;"
He further says that a mark of one who comes to the Lord is rest, because "[the LORD] gives sleep to his loved ones"
But how do we come to Christ?
We do it by faith.
And what is faith?
John Calvin says faith is "A firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence towards us,
found upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds
and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit."
you got that?
me either.
Let me put it another way: Faith is trusting God. Do you trust God with your anxieties and fears. With your busy schedule? Do you?
Do you expect as the Scriptures say, "the goodness of God' (Psalm 27:13)?
The Psalmist in Psalm 55:22 says, "Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you; he will never let the righteous be shaken."
Do you believe that the Lord can sustain you?
Peter summarizes the words of that Psalm when he says, "Cast your cares on him, because he cares for you" (1 Peter 5:7)
Do you believe it? Are you willing to trust God with those things that make you toss and turn at night?
Having faith and trusting God can be tough a times. How do we increase our faith and trust? It's through experiencing the faithfulness of God. Let me give you an illustration:
A guy from California was going to La Pointe, WI on vacation in the dead of winter. He had taken the bus from the airport to Bayfield, but was told he couldn't get to La Pointe till the morning. So he wanders into a little place there in Bayfield and gets a drink. While chatting with a local, he finds out that his hotel in La Pointe is just under two miles away. In fact, he can see it from the bar!
So after a couple drinks, the guy ventures off towards the light that the local pointed out. After about a mile,
You see the man and the truck were both supported by the ice. The smallness of the man's faith had no bearing on the support that the ice was giving. But the experience taught the man that he could trust the ice and not be fearful.
So we come to Christ in faith, and trust that he is faithful and will do what he has promised.
The second way we can learn to rest in Christ is found in verse 29 of Chapter 11. It says, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me... For my yoke is easy and my burden is light"
The Lord, the Sovereign of the Universe tells us that the way we rest is by participating with Him in His work. We do this by obeying him and following his lead. 1 John 5 says "Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Whoever loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him. By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep his commandments. For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. His commandments are not burdensome."
You see, we participate in the Love of God by obeying him and his commands aren't burdens. They are freeing. The Psalmist in Psalm 119 says that he walks about in freedom because he obeys the precepts of the Lord. I recently read a book called the Tyranny of Choice. It puts forth the idea (from a secular view point), that all the options that we now have through technology are oppressive, rather than freeing. This is what the Bible means when it says "You are a slave to the one you obey" (Romans 6:16). When we obey ourselves, we end up in sin and oppressed by our own desires. When we obey God, we are freed.
When we turn from trusting God and resting in Him, we even hear the scriptures differently. In Isaiah chapter 28, God had been speaking to his people through the prophet, yet the refuse to hear. They were prideful and relied on themselves. God's Word said, "This is the resting place. [I][g]ive rest to weary, here is refreshment"(v. 12), but they wouldn't listen. So instead of hearing God's Words as rest and refreshing, they heard, "Do this and do that. Do that and do this.Obey this rule and obey that rule. Obey that rule and obey this rule. Learn a little here and learn a little there." (v. 13)
God meant His Word to be refreshing and not burdensome, but when we don't listen to God and rest in Him, we begin to hear His Word as rules and gibberish. When we trust God, it is a resting place for our souls.
And what is it that God commands?
"believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another..." (1 John 3:23). When we operate out of Love, we are participating with God in His work in this world.
Stop striving to live up to others standard, stop trying to out do your neighbor. As the psalmist says, "Stop striving and Know that the Lord is God. He is exalted" so we don't have to be. Trust that the Lord will provide, the Lord will satisfy. Come to Christ, lay your burdens down, throw off that yoke of slavery that the world gives to you and put the yoke on that Christ gives us. You are not working alone, you are working along side Jesus Christ in this world. His yoke is easy and his commands are not burdensome.
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