Resting & Learning

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.” Matt 11:28-30

Every day I get emails and notes from people who are laboring (striving, stressed, tired) and under heavy burden.

A child is about to die. A job is lost. A husband’s committed suicide. A kid is doing drugs. Money has been stolen. A house about to be foreclosed on. A tumor found. A car wreck left a woman paralyzed. And that was just this last week.

I’m asked routinely why God allows bad things to happen to Christians and my answer never changes: we live in a sin-cursed world, targets of the curse, physically speaking. Just as the rain falls on the good and the evil, rich and poor, old and young, the curse of sin and it’s awful effects rain down equally on all mankind, again, physically speaking (upon salvation, the spiritual effects are cured instantly; the physical effects remain until this current flesh and creation are re-created).

For the lost, the tragedies of the curse (sickness, death, suffering) add to their hopelessness. For Christians, it serves to remind us of just how terrible sin really is, and causes us to focus our attention on the fullness of our redemption: spiritual now, physical to come.

In the mean time, we are blessed as God’s children (and we are the ONLY people with this blessing) to have a place of rest, and source of wisdom to help us through whatever life throws at us.

Ah, but there is a condition. Most of the time with God there is a condition but we often see that ignored in teaching whether it is a condition for having prayers heard, or a conditions of God’s will being known, or a condition of salvation. There is a condition, a requirement for availing yourself of the Lord’s rest and wisdom: you have to “come”.

You have to seek out Jesus, you have to go to Him, you have to do it on His terms. Go to Him, you who are under great stress and effort. Go to Him, you who are burdened with sadness, anxiety and grief. Go to Him, you are without hope, restless and weary. His promise? I will give you rest. Jesus doesn’t break promises, so it’s all on us, not Him.

When we go to Jesus, He will teach us how to deal with this life. He will take the heaviness of life on His shoulders and show us how to live. Our burden can be light, and our level of striving can be easy, but we must GO to Jesus and take it off our shoulders and give it to Him.

THERE IS NOTHING IN THIS LIFE THAT JESUS CANNOT SHOULDER; not death, not suffering, not loss not weariness, not uncertainty. Nothing.

And yet, we find it hard to let Jesu have our burdens. Why? Unbelief, lack of faith, doubt, pride, habit, flesh? Probably a mixture of all. Regardless, there remains but one way to receive Jesus’ promise of rest, learning and a light burden… GO to Him. Unload it all and let Him carry it for you.

There’s no time like right now…

Lord God, help us to GO to You, right now, and find rest. Help us to unload our burdens and let You carrry them for us. Help us to learn to live life as You would have us. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.