Rest

God has been talking a lot about resting in His love. What does it mean to rest in God’s love? What does it look like to step out of our circumstances and into a place of peace and rest in the Father’s heart? This is something I'm learning.

There is a security we have in resting in God’s presence, in His love. When we are so enthralled with who God is, nothing can touch us. Fear no longer has a place. Worry no longer consumes us. When we are so consumed with our Father, we step out of time and into His heart. We can hear His heart beat. We find our identity. We learn who we are, who He is and how we are to respond out of that. He teaches us, moulds us and grows us. He gives us dreams. He comforts us. He restores us.

It is so easy to move out of that place of rest and back into the hectic schedule of our day. We need to stop resisting His love, stand still, and climb into His arms and rest. We can hear His voice so much better when we know how to step out of our circumstances and into His throne room. There is something so sweet, so intimate about a moment where we still our hearts and minds, turn our eyes upward and away from our circumstances and stare into the face of our Father. He smiles over us. He is proud of us. He deeply loves us.

God wanted to make sure Israel understood the importance of rest. Even in the first week of creation, God created a day of rest. He put it into our week for a reason. Later, the Sabbath, the day of rest, was a sign of God’s covenant. Every seventh day, the Israelites were to take a day of rest. It was a sign of the covenant between God and Israel (Ex 31:14-17, Ez 20:20). God wanted them to rest. He took this seriously. He even demonstrated it so we could follow His example (Gen 2:2).

We need to learn how to rest before we can learn how to walk or even run. If we aren’t able to rest, we won’t be very effective. God did not create us to burn out. He did not create us to be stressed out because we have taken on too much and cannot rest. Jesus came so we could have life to the full (Jn 10:10). We can rest in Him (Matt 11:28-30). Our strength is in Him. Our weaknesses are made strong because it is no longer our selves working but Christ in us (2 Co 12:9-10). Christ shines all the more clearly through us because we cannot rely on ourselves at that moment.

There is a story in the Old Testament about Israel in the wilderness (Nu 21:4-9). God sends a plague of fiery snakes and when they bit the Israelites, people died. God had Moses make a bronze serpent and put him on a pole. All they had to do to be saved was to look up at the serpent on the pole. They had to take their eyes off of the snakes biting them and look up. In John 3, Jesus shows himself as the New Testament parallel. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (Jn 3:13-14).

We need to take our eyes off our circumstances, off the snakes biting us, and look to Jesus. We are saved by looking to Jesus and not at our circumstances. We are still in the circumstance, but now we have a different focus. Now we can see into the Father’s eyes. Now we can see into His heart. We have the mind of Christ (1 Co 2 :16). He will instruct us in the way we should go (Isa 48:17).

In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength. Isaiah 30:15