Take rest: a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.
~Ovid
This beautiful and very wise quote above causes me to reflect first of all upon a few verses from the
Bible in the book of Hebrews.
So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who enter into God’s rest will find
rest from their labors, just as God rested from creating the world. Let us do our best to enter that place
of rest. For anyone who disobeys God, as the people of Israel
Hebrews 4:9-11(NLT)
Our Need for Rest
As a mother of four children, one of which is an eighteen year old special needs daughter, I find a constant ongoing need for resting in Jesus. The more frustrated I become in trying to communicate with her, the more I realize how much I need to take time reflecting and meditating in God’s holy word. It is comforting to remember that God’s word brings life to my spirit, the very life of God. I receive strength and encouragement to face all the daily challenges that a wife and mother of teenagers can face. When I take a moment and open my heart to Him, He’s always there to refresh me. His faithfulness will show up in your life when you open up to Him.
All over the world people are hungering for true rest. Some of us try to take vacations every year from our
usual work schedules only to end up exhausted from the vacation. Others try to abuse physical rest by
sleeping all their time away, just another of many forms of running away from it all. Some people use
busyness as a means of forgetting their deep, emotional wounds. Many times, our minds are often busy trying to figure things out, while we long to find a switch in the back of our heads that we can turn off. For goodness sake,
we need some peace and quiet in here! We keep looking for physical ways to take care of a spiritual problem. This makes for a very conflicting battle in our will.
When we don’t get the rest we need for our mind, soul and body, we are irritable and very well may end
up damaging the important relationships that God has blessed us with. But if we will search long and
hard enough, we will discover that agitating feeling is stemming from center of our beings; if we pay the proper attention to it, we find a pain deep inside that is crying out for relief. We mustn’t ignore it.
Receiving the Rest We Need
All the while, there is a place of rest that God has prepared for us. And God so yearns for us to reach out
and receive it from Him. For Jesus said Himself,
“Come to Me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke
upon you. Let Me teach you, for I am humble and gentle and you will find rest for your souls. For My
yoke is easy and My burden is light”. (Matthew 11:28-30)
So according to Jesus, there is a place of ease that we will find when we decide to walk with Jesus. He
makes it so easy to obey Him, even in our thoughts, words and deeds. He takes the heavy load of work
(trying to do/be right in our own strength) off our shoulders and instead gives us His light. With the
warm light of the Son on my shoulders I can now stand tall and face tomorrow with a brand new hope.
The most freeing realization is to find that you can’t be right in God’s eyes on your own, quite frankly,
it’s impossible! Jesus did say in John15:5, “Apart from Me you can do nothing.” Finally, when we give
up all our exhausting efforts to “measure up”, we ask Jesus to carry on for us. And He ALWAYS does.
Jesus did all the work for us that we could never do. In our gratefulness, we must receive and rest in the
hard labor that Jesus endured for us so that we can experience the joyous fulfillment of life Jesus desired
to bring us.
Yielding the Abundant Harvest
The more we choose to trust in God and His Word, the more we will experience His rest. Therefore, our
life will yield a bountiful crop of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility
and self-control(Galatians 5:22). We will find that we actually have more than we need; so we are then
able to share our bountiful harvest with those around us. God doesn’t bless us just for us to turn around and
keep it all to ourselves. Not at all, those who allow His love to flow through them will be a blessing
to others in one way or another at every turn. As we continue to examine this quote from a
spiritual perspective, let us observe that the field in our hearts must receive the rest that only God can
give, so that our lives can be overflowing with the fruit of the Spirit that the world needs today.
So take it, it’s yours!
