One of the reasons I love Fridays so much is because I actually sleep on Thursday nights. I'm actually a really light sleeper and any sound, light, or drop in temperature wakes me up pretty easily. Throw in a brain that never really shuts off and I'm averaging about 6 hours of sleep a night. I go to bed at a decent hour, but starting Sunday nights all the way to Thursday, I wake up to see my alarm clock telling my the time at 1am, 3am, 4am, 5am, and 6am. I get so stressed about waking up on time that I don't really rest when I sleep and I wake up constantly. About a week ago I went to sleep on a wednesday night and dreamed it was Thursday. I woke up with a start at 4:15am and actually thought that I had fallen asleep taking a Thursday afternoon nap and that I needed to get up and get ready for class at 6:30. I went so far as to turn on my bedside lamp and put my feet on the floor before I realized it was actually early morning. I sleep well on Thursday nights simply because I don't have a specific time that I need to wake up on Fridays and so I sleep through the whole night. The Lord wakes me up around 8 and I always feel so refreshed after a full night's rest.
So what does my poor sleep pattern have to do with anything? Well, let me tell you. The Lord invites us to rest. I think I take it literally on Thursday nights because I know when I wake up, I'm going to have coffee with Jesus and we're going to spend a couple hours together.
This morning, my quiet time was about rest. Isn't that funny? I've read the passage where He invites us weary and heavy burdened souls to come to Him and rest and take His yoke upon us. I love it, and it makes me feel loved, but I've never really thought in detail just what a loving thing that is that He invites us to that.
This morning I came across Mark 6:31 where Jesus says to His disciples, "Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest." Isn't that beautiful? He literally tells them, "seriously, take a break. Leave all that's weighing you down behind you, drop it for a moment, and rest."
My quiet place is in a comfy white chair that was my great grandfather's that is not only next to my coffee pot, but is also conveniently close to the only heat vent in my room in case heat ever actually comes out of it.
One of my biggest struggles in life is not being able to say "no" along with thinking that I can manage everything. I have this thought that if I don't step up, then who will? I'm coming to realize that it could be a pride thing. I like people to think I'm wonderful when I do lots of things. But I heard this great quote this morning from Beth Moore and she said, "We cannot do a thousand things to the glory of God. Our attempt to do so is ridding us of an expensive thing called 'excellence.'"
It's quite humbling to hear that, actually. I was reading over some of my blogs from last fall and in one of my september ones I had mentioned that I was doing a billion things and feeling overwhelmed but loving it all. It's funny when you look back and see disregarded warning signs and you think, "ughh.. why didn't I see that? Why didn't I slow down and stop then?" But at the same time, I became so tired and exhausted and wounded in an emotional battle that by the time my winter break from school came, not only did I allow myself to rest physically, I came to know a spiritual rest that I had never "needed" before.
You know what? I think God likes to be needed. I think we experience that wanting as a taste of what God experiences. I love people. I love interacting with people. I love serving people. I love loving people. I love being needed because I love to demonstrate my passion and love for people who need it. The greater people need me, the more broken, run down, exhausted, belittled, rejected they are, the more I feel needed, the more room there is for me to pour into them, the more affirmed I feel. Perhaps God is the same way. And that is why He invites us to rest in Him. Because when we become exhausted, there's room for Him to give us life. The more loss we experience, the more room there is for His comfort.
You know why He tells us to wait sometimes? Because He loves us. I think that by telling us to wait, He gets to spend more time with us before we rush off to the next thing. We're so eager to jump up and be busy with something, some "calling" we have and He holds us back by putting His hand out in front of us and is like, "Wait just a second. Wait and spend some time with me. Wait and rest. Wait and allow yourself to be in my presence for more than the few seconds that you made that request. Just wait, I want to be with you."
When I grew up, and I've still heard this recently, I was told that there are 3 ways God answers our prayers: "Yes" "No" and "Not right now." I don't know if I really agree with that. I don't think there's ever a time when God says, "Not right now." When I was growing up, "not right now" meant that the person I was asking of was busy. God is never too busy. God rests. In the last 4 months I have requested of God to take a certain pain from my heart so many times that I don't even have a number for it. That pain stayed a long time. It stayed until I got in the habit of spending genuine time resting in the Lord. I don't think His answer was "Yes," "No," or even "Not right now" even though the pain eventually left. I think His answer was, "Rest." And there were countless times along the way that I thought there was something I was failing to surrender that was causing the pain to stay but I came to realize that wasn't it. I think God let me keep experiencing it so I would need Him. Of course I always need Him, but I really really needed him.
There's a song that I hear often that I absolutely love. It's Redeemed by Big Daddy Weave and the opening lines are, "
Seems like all I could see was the struggle
Haunted by ghosts that lived in my past
Bound up in shackles of all my failures
Wondering how long is this gonna last
Then You look at this prisoner and say to me "son
Stop fighting a fight it's already been won"
Mmmm. Isn't that good? Especially the last bit. You know what happens when you stop fighting a fight that's already been won? You rest. You don't have to fight anymore. I think that's what God is calling us to now. Stop fighting. Put down the sword, put down everything, step away, enter into His tent and rest. And seriously, a little advice from someone who has been there, if you don't drop things and step away when He says so, He might just take them out of your hands for you. He wants your surrender and if you're not able to put your hands up, it's probably because they are too full of stuff. Stuff He'd rather carry for you. Sometimes He kinda has to take us through a lot to get us to a willing point of accepting rest. Trust me, you heal faster if you don't let yourself get maimed in battle first.
So here's how I see it, rest is one of the most beautiful commandments God ever made. Because He loves us. Because He cares about when we get run down. He cares about when we can't do it all. He cares about us feeling overwhelmed. He cares about when stress prevents us from sleeping. He cares.
So rest. Carve out some time to be with Jesus if you have to. But He is inviting you to be with Him by yourselves in a quiet place. I strongly encourage you to accept it.
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