Rest Is an Act of Resistance

http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/2014/06/26/rest-is-an-act-of-resistance/32703
by Rhesa Storms
Why you’ll never overcome feelings of constant busyness until you just stop.

June 26, 2014

Last month, I met a friend for lunch. She had made some pretty radical changes in her life, including quitting a job at a highly regarded national company. It looked like the dream job — the stepping stone to career success. But to hear her tell her story, she was struggling. Her days began early and ended late. Work consumed her waking hours. Her stress level was making it difficult to sleep and it was hard to invest in relationships outside of work.

One weekend she got out of town for a mini retreat — just a couple of days out of the city to get some space and quiet. She got a lot of quiet that weekend. A freak spring snowstorm hit and knocked out the power. The roads were piled high with snow. She wasn’t in danger, but she wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while. To top it off, her phone was dead.

For the first few hours she managed to kill time. But when the silence and the aloneness caught up with her, she truly started being with herself. All the thoughts and feelings that she had been pushing aside for months in all the craziness of life came rushing forward. It took a weekend of absolute quiet to realize the busyness was slowly strangling her.

If we allow space in our lives, it’s likely that we’re going to have to start taking a good, hard look at ourselves.

Slowing down or even stopping is difficult to do. Americans are not culturally conditioned to reward rest. Our insatiable desire for money and the accumulation of material possessions often leads to long work hours and an out-of-balance lifestyle. That six-figure paycheck seems like a fair tradeoff for pushing ourselves to the brink.

Slowing down is made more difficult because technology is always “on.” A generation ago, people predicted that one of the main challenges for upcoming generations would be too much spare time. (They were just a little off with that prediction.) Rather than making space, technology has made our lives more complex. Our work life and our home life overlap. We answer emails at 9 p.m. and get texts from coworkers on our day off.

Before we know it, we find ourselves, like my friend, in the grip of external pressures that push us to go, go, go.

There is also something even deeper inside all of us that keeps us running and busy all the time: fear.

Fear of missing an opportunity.

Fear of disappointing someone.

Fear of not being included.

Fear of not being recognized.

And then there’s the fear of just being alone. We avoid rest because we can’t stand the silence.

It’s easier to keep our lives busy, rushing from one thing to the next, than it is to sit alone with our own thoughts. If we allow space in our lives, it’s likely that we’re going to have to start taking a good, hard look at ourselves. We may not like everything we see. We may have to confront what is hidden deeply in our hearts — whether that’s “I feel like a fraud at my job. I’d better put in tons of overtime so that it looks like I know what I’m doing,” or “I am incredibly lonely most of the time.”

Resting may be the most countercultural and spiritual thing we can do as people who follow God.

It’s as if God knew we would have a hard time with rest. Living a crazy, busy life isn’t just a modern problem, living a crazy, busy life is a humanity problem.

From the very early dealings with his people, God desires to give them rest. That is the beauty of the fourth commandment: remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.

The word Sabbath means to stop. Full stop. Whatever you are doing, stop. Let your hands rest. Cease the constant consumption of ideas and information and products and simply be.

It is easy for us to get caught up in ourselves and begin to overestimate our own importance. So God gives us rest to set us free.

Free from our own busyness.

Free from our own self-importance.

Free to delight in God.

To delight in creation.

To delight in each other.

With Sabbath, God sends the message: rest is important to the way you live. So important I want you to do it regularly.

Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann talks about the importance of Sabbath rest in his book Sabbath as Resistance:

Sabbath is the cornerstone of faithful freedom . . . it is an act of resistance. It declares in bodily ways that we will not participate in the anxiety system that pervades our social environment. We will not be defined by busyness and by acquisitiveness and by pursuit of more, in either our economics or our personal relations or anywhere in our lives. Because our life does not consist in commodity.

What a beautiful idea! Rest, rather than being something passive, is an act of resistance.

Resting may be the most countercultural and spiritual thing we can do as people who follow God. In our modern, crazy-busy, take-it-to-the-limit society, rest is an act of trust in a sovereign God.

In Psalm 46:10, the psalmist writes:

Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.
It will be hard to allow extra space in life. It’s likely to feel uncomfortable — we’re not used to it! It may look unnecessary. But it is in that very space that we prosper. Be still and know that I am God. In stillness, a very important truth is revealed: you are not God.

How about we stop living like it all depends on us?

How about we let go of that burden that was never ours to carry?

And in the stillness we know God. We have the space to truly experience the presence of God in a way we never would when we are continually rushing from one place to the next. Verse 10 is the climax of Psalm 46, but the beginning is worth noting:

God is our refuge and strength,

an ever-present help in trouble.

Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way

and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

though its water roar and foam

and the mountains quake with their surging . . .

Be still, and know that I am God.

It’s beautiful poetic imagery of trusting in God when the very foundations of the earth feel shaken. Written for the average person today, maybe the psalm would sound something like this:

God is the One I turn to for safety and strength.

I won’t be afraid when I don’t know when the next job will come in.

I won’t be afraid when my plans fail and my dreams are frustrated.

I won’t be afraid when markets rise and fall,

When outcomes seem uncertain,

Though I feel torn between conflicting demands on my heart and my mind and my time,

I will be still and know that You are God.

Sabbath. Stillness. Rest. All along God has been saying: trust me! I will care for you. You can live without anxiety and fear if you will regularly rest from the work and the production, the achieving and striving, the constant busyness — and turn to me!

When it is so easy to push it to the edge and take it to the limit and measure ourselves against one another, these are life-giving words. Trusting in who God is, who God has designed us to be, and realizing our part to play in God’s Kingdom are the hallmarks of a life with regular rest.

Most of the time, we don’t see our lives as careening off track and into danger. Until they are. Let’s not wait for a freak spring snowstorm to remind us to rest. Let’s be people committed to rest — to practicing it together and encouraging it in each other. In that way, we are actively trusting God.



Image courtesy of Steven Lewis.
More on: alone, busy, fourth commandment, resistance, rest, sabbath, stillness


Written byRhesa Storms

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What I learned from totally unplugging and shutting up for three days

Edward Morrissey, The Week, July 22, 2014

No one has ever mistaken me for a rebel or a counter-cultural warrior, not even when I was at an age when it might be expected or even appropriate. I never once ran away from home. (Heck, I didn’t even move out on my own until I was 22.) My tastes in food, art, and fashion run solidly to the classics, if not the outright conventional. Yet late last Thursday afternoon, I found myself escaping work and my social life to do something that has become downright transgressive—going silent for several days.

This wasn’t just a routine slowdown in public communication or a brief break in traveling between internet connections, either. For almost four days, no one would hear from me—not family, not friends, and certainly not readers or Twitter followers. I entered a Jesuit retreat center, where I engaged in almost no conversation—spoken or otherwise—from Thursday evening to Sunday evening. Cell phones had to be turned off, and no television, radio, or newspapers would be available. No wi-fi networks would be in range for miles. Instead of overloading on moment-to-moment social networking and news updates, all of the men would cut off from the world and contemplate God.

Not one phone call. Not one tweet. Not even a text, or a breaking-news update. Just … silence. “You cannot make a good retreat,” the priests advise right from the beginning, “unless you are recollected, and you cannot be recollected unless you keep silence.” Recollection involves disconnection—and disconnection means facing yourself as well as facing God.

This was not my first visit to the Jesuit retreat center. For the past three years, I have spent one long weekend each July at the retreat, housed on the former estate of a Minnesota industrialist. Each year I have disconnected from the hyperconnected world in which we live, and that produces feelings of panic and obsession that feel very similar to withdrawal. Each year it gets easier, but not once has it failed to provoke anxiety, dread, and occasionally outright panic. On my first retreat, I spent my first night wondering how I could break into the garage to retrieve my cell phone and make sure I was not missing any important messages, big stories, or career-ending mistakes. Now that’s addiction, or at least the paranoia that it sometimes causes.

While on this retreat, I dedicated my time to spiritual growth. But after my return, I began to think more about the effort required to just stop and reflect for a few days. We used to live in an un-networked age. We had conversations around the water cooler at work, but became incognito once on the road home. Vacations didn’t carry an expectation of checking in constantly on company performance. Social networking meant going on a tour with your lodge or parish, and twitter was a heads-up for bird watchers on nature hikes. Every vacation allowed for silence in some manner, and every factory whistle started a retreat of sorts.

The digital age brings with it many blessings, especially in terms of ready information and instantly accessible research, but the most seductive are the instant connections we make on social media. Those who make a living in online media thrive in this environment. We can know about the smallest developments on the most arcane stories and issues in real time, communicate them to our friends and colleagues, and get instant feedback on what the broader community believes it means.

That’s surely not all bad, but it’s not all good, either. More and more, all of us live under the expectation of constant connection. We barely get time for sleeping, let alone having regular intervals of the quiet solitude needed to process all of this data to find its meaning. Ubiquitous connection rarely goes unused, either by those looking for people who are taking a break, or more so by the break-takers themselves. We feel compelled to post to social media when we should be socializing with family and friends, and tweeting life as observers instead of living it.

It’s easy to feel victimized by this, but it’s really a self-inflicted conceit. We become the center of our own worlds, with the constant connection a validation of our own importance. The removal of that connection does not disturb anyone else, but the removal of that validation makes it clear that the world spins on without us. And when we return, we discover that not much really changes in the time we spent away from social media, away from the office, and even away from friends and family.

Even when I knew it was coming, that realization still had its shock effect. When I returned home this time, I tarried on the drive, making a couple of stops along the way for groceries after discovering (in a cell phone call that began just as I cleared the gates of the retreat center) that my wife had missed me but otherwise had a perfectly fine weekend without me. Over 280 emails awaited me when I got back to my computer—but only three of them required a reply. While stories arose and developed on the newswires, media outlets, and Twitter, my colleagues handled them just fine without me. It took me very little time to re-enter the online media environment, and few noticed my absence or my return.

Withdrawing from the world turns out not to be transgressive after all, but it’s edifying. What really frightens us about going entirely silent, disconnecting, and gaining some perspective is also what make it so valuable. We depart believing in some way that we’re God, and then return realizing that we’re not. Even if that’s all I gained from this retreat—and it’s not—it would have been time well spent.

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Learning to Rest in the Lord with Terminal Cancer - Abigail Smith

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The Peace that Passes Understanding! - How do we get it?

By Dennis Edwards:

As I was reading the Bible last night, I came across the verse, “Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness.” (Proverbs 14:13) And later, “The righteous has hope in his death.” (Proverbs 14:32b) Those verses got me into thinking. It was the second time recently where verses about sadness and death seemed to reach out to me. Maybe it was a result of the sudden death of the son of a friend of mine. It brought back to me the death of my own son.

But how do we get “that peace which passes all understanding” which is spoken of in God’s word? I did a Google check and found Philippians 4:7 was the reference I was looking for. It says, “And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Ultimately, it is only God that can give us the peace of mind that we seek. We may have a cup of wine, or a good meal. We may watch a television program or movie and laugh while relaxing together. I had done that, that same night. But at last, as I lay down to sleep, I was still worried about some situations in my family that seemed to be unresolved. There seemed to be some blockage holding things back.

Why is it I do not have that peace that His word speaks of? His sweet voice came to me in my conscience, “You need to pray and commit things to Me. That’s where you will find the peace.” And, so, I did. Because unless we come into the presence of God, no matter how much amusement we seek to stop us of from thinking and being anxious about the future, we will not find peace. The word amusement actually means “away from thinking, or not thinking.” Like the word atheist means “one who does not believe in God.” The word “muse” means “to think,” therefore “a - muse” means “to not think.” We have amusements to stop us from thinking, because often our thoughts are anxious thoughts. Jesus has told us not to take any anxious thought for tomorrow. But how do we do that. It is easier said than done.

We may have health problems, or financial problems. We may have problems with our children or grandchildren. How can we get rid of that heavy feeling, that worry that we feel, be it from our own lacks, or darts from the enemy? I have found the only real cure is coming into the presence of God in prayer and praise, in song and reading His word and pouring out my heart and mind to the Lord.

God has promised to give us peace which passes all understanding. But that peace can only be found if we spend time in the presence of the Prince of Peace – Jesus Christ. His word says, “Great peace have they which love Thy law and nothing shall offend them.” (Psalm 119:165) We need to spend time meditating on His word. We need to spend time in prayer and thanksgiving. We need to spend time pouring out our hearts, our minds, our troubles to Him who is the author and finisher of our faith.

God says, “I will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Me, because he trusts in Me.” (Isaiah 26:3 paraphrased) Jesus says, “Come unto Me all you that labor and are heavy laden. Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest unto your souls.” (Matthew 11:28) In other words, we shall find the peace of mind and heart when we cast our burdens unto the Lord and rest in Him. When we rest in the Lord, we know everything is going to be alright because we trust in Him.

When l found the verse about peace after writing this, the verses before and after it confirmed what I have shared. Philippians 4:6 the verse before the “peace” verse says, “Be careful (or anxious) for nothing.” In other words do not be anxious or worried. “But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be known unto God.” You see, we need to bring those worries to God in desperate prayer. That’s why it says “prayer and supplication.” When we do, the next verse follows. “And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”

Philippians 4:8, the verse after the “peace” verse, gives us some instruction on how to maintain that peace once we have found it. “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” Paul goes on to say in the next verse that if we do the things which he has taught us “the God of peace shall be with you.”

Let “the peace of God which passes all understanding … keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Amen!

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The Lamp

By David Brandt Berg

Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him.—Psalm 62:51

It’s a common error of Christian workers to give too much, beyond their capacity. They need to save some strength for themselves, for their Lord. When they are tired, they need to rest. When they are weary, sometimes they just need to retire from the fray and give the battle to others. They need to know when to fight and when to be still, when to give and when to save, when to work and when to rest, when to give to others and when to pray. When they save others, indeed themselves they cannot save, but there are times when they must save themselves if they are going to save others and still others and yet others.

Sometimes they need to choose between that which is good and that which is best for the kingdom. Most of all, they must save their best for the Lord, give their best to their Bridegroom and save the first place for Him. We need to give first place to Him, His fellowship, and His love. We all need to learn to rest in His arms and not to work so hard in our own strength. We all need to learn to save our best for our Lord.

“In quietness and confidence shall your strength be.”2 “Cast thy burden on the Lord and He shall sustain thee!”3 “Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden. Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.”4 Sometimes we try to carry too much, to do too much. We need to leave more for the Lord. “Cast thy burden on the Lord, for He shall sustain thee. Trust in the Lord, and do good, and verily thou shalt be fed and thy days shall be long in the land,”5 for He shall sustain thee.

“For strength comes from the Lord, who giveth to all abundantly and upbraideth not.”6 “For if ye ask for bread, will He give you a stone? And if ye ask for fish, will He give you a serpent? Therefore if ye know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that love Him,”7 to sustain them.

We all need to learn to depend more on the Lord, to leave more to the Lord. We can’t do everything; it’s humanly, physically impossible to do it all! You just have to do what you can day by day, and leave the rest to the Lord. If you can’t do it, He has to. “He knows, He loves, He cares. Nothing His truth can dim. He gives the very best to those who save the best for Him.”

Help each of us to learn how to apportion our time so we can save the very best for You, Lord, and rest from our labors in Your arms, so that You can give us Your strength, the strength which can only be found in Your arms and Your love, as we give our very best to You.

“And ye shall find rest to your soul.” Not many people understand that the soul is a body with a spirit.8 If we don’t rest in the Spirit, we can wear out in body, and we need to learn to rest in the Spirit to save our bodies, so that we’ll have strength to minister to others. For strength comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth and our bodies, and He knows what we need most of all: peace, fellowship with Him, and feeding on His Word.

We must first be partakers of the fruits before we can feed others. We can’t feed others if we have not fed ourselves. We must first feed our own souls before we can break bread for others. We cannot give it all and have nothing left to give, lest we burn out and have no oil left for our Bridegroom.9 We must seek first the King and His kingdom, then shall all these other things be added unto us by His power, His strength, His kingdom, His might, in His time, if we give first place to Him.10

We can’t afford to burn ourselves out in service to others, until we have nothing left for ourselves or the King. We need to learn to save first place for Him and our times of communion with Him. We belong to Him first of all. The first place must belong to Him and peace, quietness, rest, feeding and fellowship with the Lord. For we cannot do the Master’s work without the Master’s power. We must save first place for Him and His Word, His love, and His power, and from this shall our strength come. We cannot do it alone in our own strength.

It must be the oil that burns and not the wick, for the wick burning without oil can destroy itself. We have to let Him burn to light the way, and not try to burn of ourselves, or we can eventually burn out and have no light left for our Master. The flame burns so beautifully and brightly and clearly, so strong with oil. But it gets so smoky and confused and stinky when it just burns the wick.

The wick must be deeply immersed in the oil. Most of the wick is in the oil; only a tiny little tip of it is exposed to the air and to the flame. It’s mostly oil that burns and very little of the wick, almost none, and the oil flows freely through a wick that is deeply soaked in the oil. Then it is the oil that burns and not the wick, and gives bright, pure, clear light to all the house in the beauty of His perfection, in the holiness of His light.

For the life that I now live, I live by the strength of the Lord that liveth in me. It is not I that live, but Christ that liveth in me.11 It is not I that burn, but Christ must burn within me, to give pure light, smokeless light, clear light, beautiful light.

When I was a boy, they had these beautiful kerosene lamps in every home on every table, and they had a lovely glass bowl full of oil so you could see the level of the oil in the lamp so you knew when to replenish it. You could tell when the oil was getting low and when too much of the wick was out of the oil, for the lamp would get smoky when there wasn’t enough oil to really soak the wick.

The lamp burned best when full of oil. In other words, it was the oil that burned and not the wick. Not I that burn, but Christ that burns in me!

Isaiah said “Come! Why spend ye your substance for that which is not meat and your strength for that which is not bread? Come and buy of me. Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come, buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? And your labor for that which satisfieth not? Hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness.”12

Sometimes we try too hard, we work too hard trying to do everything ourselves, when we need to let the Lord do the burning, to let Him flow through us. Let Him burn.

I’ve found a refuge from life’s care in Jesus,
I am hiding in His love divine;
He fully understands my soul’s deep longing,
And He whispers softly, “Thou art Mine.”

Jesus, only Jesus,
Only He can satisfy.
Every burden becomes a blessing
When I know my Lord is nigh.
—A. B. Christiansen

We can only find true satisfaction in the Lord.

I have found no satisfaction in the fleeting joys of earth;
I have hewed me broken cisterns that have mocked me by their dearth.
All the springs my soul has tested failed to meet my deepest need.
Christ alone has met my longing, He has satisfied indeed!

Christ is not a disappointment! Every longing in my breast
Finds, in Him, complete fulfillment, He has brought me into rest.
I have tested Him and proved Him more than all I’d dreamed He’d be
Christ is not a disappointment, He is all in all to me!
—C. W. Waggoner

Leave it there! Leave it there!
Cast thy burden on the Lord and leave it there.
If you’ll trust and never doubt,
He will surely bring you out,
Take your burden to the Lord and leave it there.
—Charles Tindley

So just leave it with the Lord, knowing that only He can solve the problems and only He can do the work. So many take their burdens to the Lord and lay them on the altar, and then pick them right back up again and walk off with them. We cannot solve the problems. He has to do it. You need to let go and let God. All you have to do is just let the Lord shine through. Just let the oil flow. Let the Lord flow. Let Him do it. Let the Lord do it!

Particularly with people who have a lot of drive and dynamism in the natural, it’s hard for them not to just really boom boom boom, push things through in their own strength. But natural force has its limits. Men of force are men of faults, and often the biggest fault is to keep on going in their own force or strength instead of letting the Lord do it.

May the Lord bless and keep you and make you a great blessing to many—in His strength by His power!

Then we’ll give all the glory to Jesus
And tell of His love, His wonderful love.
We’ll give all the glory to Jesus,
And tell of His wonderful love.
—Author Unknown

Originally published March 1983. Adapted and republished January 2014.

1 NIV.

2 Isaiah 30:15.

3 Psalm 55:22.

4 Matthew 11:28–30.

5 Psalm 37:3.

6 Psalm 121:2; James 1:5.

7 Matthew 7:9–11.

8 Genesis 2:7.

9 Matthew 25:1–13.

10 Matthew 6:33.

11 Galatians 2:20.

12 Isaiah 55:1–2.

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The Master's Power

By David Brandt Berg, unless otherwise indicated
Audio length: 11:34
Download Audio (10.5MB)

No one can continue to keep pouring out to others without spending some time alone with the Lord getting filled up again. I’ve been in the Lord’s work for half a century, and my mother for half a century before me, and my grandfather for half a century before her, so I know what I’m talking about. As A. B. Simpson, that grand old man of faith, once said, “You cannot do the Master’s work without the Master’s power!” And to get it, you must spend time with the Master.

We all need more quiet time alone with the Lord in rest and refilling, drinking at the living water of His Word and fellowshipping with Him in the communion of prayer and the sweet lovemaking of the Spirit.

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Blessed is the man whose strength is in You.—Psalm 84:51

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If we try to do the Master’s work without the Master’s power, we’re tackling an impossible task. We cannot strive in our own strength. Unless we look to Jesus in very earnest prayer for the strength and spirit and inspiration to help us through, we’re apt to wear ourselves out.

It’s like the story about a small boy who was trying very hard to lift a heavy object. The boy’s father came into the room and asked him, “Are you using all your strength?”

“Yes, of course I am,” the boy impatiently exclaimed.

“No, you’re not,” the father answered. “You haven’t asked me to help you!”

So it is with Jesus and us. Aren’t we so often like that little boy? But a little help from Jesus is the biggest help we can get, and that’s all the help we need. Just a little help from Jesus will make it right. Without Him we’re nothing, but with Him we can do anything.2

“Give me a task too big, too hard for human hands, then shall I come at length to lean on Thee, and leaning find my strength.”3

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We have such trust through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.—2 Corinthians 3:4–5

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I’m reminded of the story of the little girl who wanted to make her father a present for his birthday. Each evening, instead of spending her usual time with her father, she worked on making him new bedroom slippers—and she nearly broke his heart! God may appreciate the bedroom slippers you’re making for Him, but He’d rather have you! And the truth is, you’ll probably make an awful mess out of those slippers if you neglect your time with Him!

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He gives power to the weak,
And to those who have no might He increases strength.
But those who wait on the Lord
Shall renew their strength;
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.
—Isaiah 40:29,31

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The more Word you take in, the easier and more natural it will be for you to pass it on to others. You’ve got to have it in before you can give it out. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.”4 If you’ll be faithful to read, study, and memorize His Word, then He can bring it to your remembrance whenever you need it.

Even witnessing the Word to others is not as important as getting the Word into yourself. You’ll never have the spiritual strength and stamina to get out the Word unless you drink in the Word and get spiritually nourished and strengthened by it yourself first. You cannot do the Master’s work without the Master’s power—and to get it, you must spend time with the Master.

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What was it about those first Spirit-filled disciples that convinced so many that Jesus was who He had said He was, the Messiah? “Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.”5

Peter, John, and the others didn’t let their backgrounds or anything else hold them back. They just went ahead and witnessed boldly, and they had tremendous power that got tremendous results. It was obvious that they had been with Jesus. They had His power to carry on His work!

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The rule of thumb is very simple. The solution is plain, but not always easy. God’s Word makes it very clear, and it’s summed up in the little slogan on priorities, “Jesus and others, then you!” If you’ll follow this simple rule, it’ll keep you out of a lot of trouble! Jesus comes first! The first commandment is to love God. “You shall have no other gods before Me … I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.”6—Not even His work, or your family, or yourself! Some of you thought that by seeking first the kingdom of God you were putting the Lord first, but this is not always necessarily so. Sometimes you can neglect your fellowship with the King of kings because you’re so busy with the affairs of the kingdom, and this can be disastrous to your spiritual life and communion with the Lord! You cannot do the Master’s work without the Master’s power and guidance!

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Staying calm, pacing yourself, going slow but steady, and exhibiting an attitude of faith and trust is not only wise, but it honors Me. Your actions tell others that I’m in control, that you’re trusting Me to do the work through you, and to get it done on time.

Stress often works against My will and My plan, because when you have a feeling of stress, often the first thing to be pushed out of your schedule is your time resting and refilling at My feet. You switch to high gear and work longer and longer hours, and in so doing, if you do it consistently enough, you also risk wearing out and burning out, because you cannot do the Master’s work without the Master’s power.

One way to avoid stress is, when you begin to feel yourself getting under the strain of all that needs to be done, stop and ask Me what to do next. Tell Me your thoughts, describe the urgency of your task, and I will gently soothe your ruffled nerves and calm your mind with all its racing thoughts as I show you the most efficient way to accomplish what needs to be done.

My peace passes all understanding, but to get that peace you need to take time with Me. As you acknowledge Me, I can drape your shoulders with the garment of peace that passes understanding—My peace.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy

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First Place
I was longing to serve the Master,
But alas, I was laid aside
From the busy field of workers
In the harvest field so wide.
There were few, yes, few in number,
And I could not understand
Why I should be left inactive:
It was not as I had planned.

I was longing to serve the Master
And the need indeed was great.
For me it was easy to labor
But, oh, it was hard to wait,
To lie still and be quiet
While the song was borne to my ear
From the busy field of workers
In the harvest field so dear!

I was longing to serve, just to serve the Master,
But He led to a desert place.
And there as we stopped and rested
His eyes looked down in my face,
So full of tender reproaching
They filled me with sad surprise!
Did He think I had grudged my service
Or counted it sacrifice?

Oh, Master, I long to serve Thee, just to serve Thee,
There are so few at best.
Let me off to the fields, I pleaded,
I care not to stay and rest.
I knelt at His feet imploring,
I gazed in His face above.
My child, He said, don’t you know
Your service is nothing without your love?

I was longing to serve, to serve my Master,
Oh, this was my one fond thought,
For this I was ever pleading
At His footstool in prayer I sought,
But there in that lonely desert
Apart from the busy scene
It dawned on me slowly and clearly
Where my great mistake had been.

My mind was so full of service, just service,
I had drifted from Him apart,
And He longed for the sweet communion,
That union of heart with heart!
Well, I sought and I found forgiveness,
While mine eyes with pain were dim.
And now, though His work is still precious,
My first place is kept for Him!
—Virginia Brandt Berg

Published on Anchor November 2013. Read by Bryan Clark.
Music by Daniel Sozzi.


1 Unless otherwise noted, the scriptures in this post are from the New King James Version (NKJV).

2 John 15:5; Philippians 4:13.

3 Wilbur H. “Witt” Fowler.

4 Luke 6:45.

5 Acts 4:13.

6 Exodus 20:3,5.

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Resting in the Lord Maximizes Your Witness

By M. Fontaine

Download Audio (7.3MB)

“Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him.”1

Resting in the Lord is putting your weight down on Jesus and spending time in deep communion and fellowship with Him so that He can infuse you with strength, renew your vision, and love you long and tenderly. It’s carrying a spirit of peace and faith, putting Jesus first, learning to see in the spirit, surrendering your will to Jesus. Resting in the Lord is one of our lifesavers, or sanity savers, in busy times.

Resting in the Lord is pleasant because it involves thinking about Jesus, spending time with Him, and reveling in the wonders of the spirit realm. In that sense, it’s not hard or taxing, although it does take faith to slow down and stop our other activities in order to do it. It takes faith to work in the spirit. But as we do, we will reap wonderful benefits.

We need more and more of Jesus in order to be effective witnesses and soul winners. If you try to plow through your outreach and witnessing and teaching in your own strength, you’ll wear out. Being a professional missionary is taxing, and there is always way more to do than you can possibly get done. The way to survive and avoid stressing out and burning out is to learn to rest in the Lord, to learn to work in the spirit, to learn how to effectively cast your burdens on Jesus and let Him carry the load.2

Our work for the Lord needs to be a work of His Spirit—Him working through us. It can’t be an arm-of-the-flesh approach. It has to be each of us leaning hard on Him, committing our work to Him, resting in Him, and looking to Him.3

Our lives are busy, and they’re probably not going to get any less busy, so we need to have the calm and peace and strength that come from resting in the Lord and taking time for meditation. The more at peace we are, the more faith we manifest to others, and the more they will want what we have. So many people in the world long for peace. Being full of faith and calm and trust is a part of our witness, and it’s part of what will draw others to Jesus.

Aside from the physical and spiritual benefits that we personally reap, and the renewed anointing that we receive for witnessing and winning, we can receive the power to do the difficult, because we’re letting His Spirit work through us. We can better know how to care for those we’re ministering to because we have spent quiet time alone with Jesus, meditating on Him, connecting to His Word, and He is able to minister to our spirit and speak to us.

Another benefit of resting in the Lord and meditation is that we give the Lord an opportunity to prepare our hearts for those that we will meet that day. He might even give us a feeling, or a picture, or a word that could turn out to be key. We’ll also be attuned more acutely to the Lord’s checks throughout the day, as a result of time spent resting in Him and meditating, and can be more sensitive to out-of-the-ordinary or unexpected witnessing opportunities or open doors.

When we’re resting in the Lord, our spirits and minds are more filled with the Lord’s Spirit, and we’re able to pass this on to those we’re ministering to. Even if it’s not always something physical or tangible that we give to others, they will be able to sense the Lord’s Spirit in us more readily. As we slow our spirits down in order to spend time resting in the Lord, meditating on Him, and getting into the spirit, He can show us what our priorities are, and we’ll have increased faith to act on them.

Resting in the Lord and meditating brings a whole lot more peace and calm to our spirits. It gives us more strength and more joy in our labors and in our witnessing and winning. It will be a testimony to those whom we come in contact with.


Words from Jesus

As you meditate and reflect on Me and My Word, you will become more of a reflection of Me. You will become more of a mirror of Me as you turn your face up to the light. When the needs press hard upon you, reflect Me on to whatever situation arises. When obstacles arise, reflect My answers. When hearts are awaiting My truth, reflect Me. Resting in Me will help you reflect more of My Spirit, and My Spirit is the ultimate in overcoming obstacles, in answering problems, in touching hearts, and performing miracles.

*

I will allow crisis moments so that your quietude, your reliance on Me, will be a testimony to others. When everything seems to be falling apart around you and yet you keep your cool, this will help draw others to you. It will spark interest; it will cause people to want what you have. Even in the petty daily cares of life, the peace that you exude will cause others to take note. The simple, everyday-business tasks you have to do can lead to a witness if you are filled with Me, resting in Me, and reflecting My Spirit.

*

When you take the time to meditate and give Me time to work in your heart and spirit, I am able to reveal to you things that you wouldn’t have known otherwise. These will be as jewels of great worth—such as insight into the lives of those to whom you are ministering.

*

Resting in Me is like a charge-up for your spirit.

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Resting in Me can give you the steady hand of faith and keen eye of vision so that you will more likely spot the target when it comes into view, avoid distractions, and hit the mark of My will.

*

Have you ever tried to push a stalled car? It’s pretty hard work. Have you ever tried to push it uphill? That’s incredibly difficult. But I can turn on the power and get that car moving so that you don’t have to push. I’ve got the keys. I’ve got the juice to power your venture. If you push so hard in your own strength, it’s just like pushing a dead car, and it’s going to wear you out and exhaust you. You’ll be in for a long and grueling uphill fight with a heavy car. Resting in Me is like asking Me for the keys so that you can turn the ignition and zoom off into the sunset under My power.

Original published August 2008. Updated and republished June 2013.
Read by Irene Quiti Vera.


1 Psalm 37:7 NKJ.

2 1 Peter 5:7.

3 See John 15:5 and Zechariah 4:6.

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