Loved and Protected

Rest? What’s that? It’s promised everywhere, isn’t it? Just look at the billboards and commercials. They promise rest in luxury resort areas, sleep aids, in expensive mattresses, in movie theaters, places to get away from it all, don’t they? But most of us have been running from one to the other of those things for years and found little rest anywhere.

So where is the place of real rest? One that doesn’t break the budget or give merely a temporary fix, one that doesn’t have side effects or cause buyers’ remorse?

Is there a place on earth where we can truly rest? There is, but rather than a place, it is found only in the Person of Jesus Christ.

Personally, I’d heard this concept preached for years, and yet its true nature escaped me, haunted as I was by perfectionism and doing things exactly right. I even sought the truth about rest in God’s Word, but for a long time I found no rest there either. Why? Because I wasn’t ready to give up trying to find it on my own.

Rest in one’s spirit is a rather nebulous thing, isn’t it? We can grasp it, or think we have, for a brief time, but when things go wrong or life cycles between good times and hard, we ride the tide, up and down, and it quickly slips away.

But true rest doesn’t depend on circumstances or economic conditions, health, wealth or whether we have the means to retire in some incredible mountain retreat or whiling away the hours on a sandy beach somewhere. Real rest comes in knowing we are precious to our wonderful Creator, God–knowing we are loved with an everlasting love, and are here for a reason, to glorify the Lord Jesus Christ. Rest is the byproduct of understanding our identity in Christ, the One who bought us back from the enemy, Satan, via His death on the cross.

In Him, we find our value, dump our grief, fears, and cares, take comfort in His changelessness, and find solace and rest in the truth, that whatever we lack, He is.

As we age, we can take immense comfort in the fact that He doesn’t value us any less, and in fact, He can give us a reason to live until we’re finally called home to heaven.

But true rest demands that we give up striving to make it on our own. Because we are sinners, we can never measure up to God’s high standard of perfection. But Jesus does. He always has, and He always will, so when we put on His righteousness, God says, “It is enough. Come in and rest and talk with Me. Be My friend.” And in the talking and dumping of my cares I find the rest I so desperately seek.

This truth transforms me. No matter what ups and downs lie ahead, I am His and He is mine. He even goes so far as to offer an invitation in Matthew 11:30: “Come unto Me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” 

Come and rest in the person of Jesus Christ.

Because of His great love,

Nancy

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