I was talking with someone last week and I was saying to her that our final spiritual discipline in this series was rest. And she said, “OK, rest is right in my wheelhouse! I know how to do that one!”
We laughed about that but her comment made me wonder: Do we really know how to rest?
According to a recent study, the average American wakes up feeling well-rested less than 50% of the time. This survey of 2,000 adults indicated that the average person gets less than six hours of sleep each night. Obviously there are some life circumstances that impact these numbers. If you have an infant or if you’re going through a particularly stressful time at work, you’re more likely to lose sleep. But even if you account for those situations, it’s clear that rest is something that eludes many of us. Another study indicates that it takes the average American approximately two hours to fall asleep at night. It seems that we are a fairly restless people.
And that’s unfortunate, because the Bible makes it clear that God intends for us to have times of rest.
The Old Testament idea of Sabbath was designed to be a time of rest from manual labor. This was God’s gift to the Israelites as they came out of slavery in Egypt. One of the egregious things about slavery is that it reduces a human being down to the level of production. No doubt the Egyptians held this utilitarian view of their Israelite captives. But God redeems Israel out of slavery and gives them a new identity. He gives them the Sabbath command to rest because God Himself rested at the end of His work in creation. And since we are made in His image, it is important for us to have times of rest as well.
And this isn’t just an OT concept. Jesus says in Matthew 11:28, Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Jesus invites us to find our rest in Him. This similar idea is expressed by the writer of Hebrews 4:9-10, There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from His. From the Old Testament to the New, God consistently calls His people to come and enter into His rest.
But what does it mean to rest in the Lord?
To answer that, I’d like to look at Psalm 46.
Psalm 46:10, Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!
For those who know this verse well, it conjures up images of drinking coffee on the back deck of a chalet somewhere in the mountains. There’s a soothing, serene tone to this line, at least that’s how I think most of us hear it in our minds.
But if you read the rest of the Psalm, you realize something startling: the immediate context of this passage is warfare! Just look at the preceding verse: He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth; he breaks the bow and shatters the spear; he burns the chariots with fire. How we went from burning chariots to peaceful sips of coffee, I’ll never know.
The idea here is that we are to stop all of our restless striving as if the outcome depends upon us. We are to trust in the picture of God as our refuge and our strength, for He is the one who fights our battles for us. When we trust in this, we can truly be still. We release all of this in the knowledge that He is Sovereign. As the line says, He will be exalted in the earth.
I think THAT is what it means to be still and know that He is God.
Rest is the antidote to our restlessness.
Rest is the only way to curb our addiction to busyness. It is a way of honoring our human limitations. This is what made the Sabbath so important. Sabbath was a way of learning to live on God’s time. It was patterned after God’s rest at the conclusion of creation. We’re not made to work without end, 24/7. You have a finite amount of energy and time. We are made with limitations — because we are not God.
I think one of the reasons we feel so restless is because we assume too much responsibility. If you live as if the outcome completely depends on you and your effort and your will, the word for that is idolatry. You’re taking on too much.
Maybe the reason it takes people two hours to fall asleep at night is because we’re too busy playing God.
Restlessness is at work in the unsustainable pace at which many of us live.
Restlessness is behind the way we drive.
It’s at work in our deep fear of missing out. We like to assume that we can be like God — that we can be everywhere, all the time. And Satan uses this to diminish us to the degree that we’re never really present anywhere because we’re always worried that we might be missing out on something else.
These are just a few of the hallmarks of our restlessness.
That is why it is so important for us to live in obedience to this command: to be still and know that the Lord is indeed God. When you do that, you’ll find the cure for your restlessness. As Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they find rest in God.
When do you rest?
And how do you rest?
already & not yet 