A season of loneliness and hurt and temptation batter the soul. And we rise up again and again to make things right that are wrong, fighting for relationships...fighting for our country...fighting for our marriages...fighting for our children...fighting for what God has said is best and right. And we SHOULD fight for those things. Complacency should have no place at all. And yet, when all we do is met with walls of silence, walls of rejection, walls of defeat again and again...then perhaps it is time to rest from our work. Perhaps it is time to believe that He really means what He says when He promises that ALL things will work together for our good. All things...even this thing that threatens to rip you to shreds...even that person who isn't at all the leader you want...even that relationship that leaves you feeling abandoned and rejected...even that situation that seems hopeless. He says ALL things work together for our good if we love Him. Here's the test: DO YOU BELIEVE HIM? Perhaps it is time that we rest from all the things we so badly want to do to make things right and instead trust HIM to do it. It could very well be that all our "doing" is getting in the way of God moving in to work in a much higher and more powerful way that we ever could.
We rest by believing...really, truly, honestly believing He is who He says He is and will do what He says He will do. Can we say we really believe Him?
Hudson Taylor, when in in a season of "agony of soul" said, "I strove for faith, but it would not come; I tried to exercise it, but in vain. Seeing more and more the wondrous supply of grace laid up in Jesus, the fullness of our precious Savior, my guilt and helplessness seemed to increase. Sins committed appeared but as trifles compared with the sin of unbelief which was their cause, which could not or would not take God at his word, but rather made him a liar! Unbelief was, I felt, the damning sin of the world; yet I indulged in it. I prayed for faith, but it came not. What was I to do?"
The answer came to Hudson Taylor later, when God removed the scales from his eyes: "But how to get faith strengthened? Not by striving after faith, but by resting on the faithful one." "Ah, there is rest! I have striven in vain to rest in him. I'll strive no more. For has not he promised to abide with me--never to leave me, never to fail me?" "I am no longer anxious about anything, as I realize this for he, I know, is able to carry out his will, and his will is mine. It makes no matter where he places me or how. That is rather for him to consider than for me; for in the easiest position he must give me his grace, and in the most difficult his grace is sufficient."
For that lonely, battered, heartbroken, tattered, weary soul who is dragging in from some battlefield in life, "let us make every effort to enter that rest"...HIS rest. Lay it down at His feet, and walk into His rest.
