The Gift of Rest.
entering god’s rest & dwelling there.
Written by Mwati Tembo
“There’s an invitation from Jesus [to rest] waiting for you…”
At the start of 2020, I felt God begin to speak to me about “rest.” At that time, I’d felt fairly burnt out and fatigued from what you could call, for the lack of a better word, a “busy” season. Pre-pandemic and post-many-changes-in-my-personal-life, I remember thinking, “Sweet, I’ll just take a week off. Thanks for the heads up, God.”
I then realised very quickly that’s not what He meant.
I scribbled the words “The Gift of Rest” in a notebook not knowing what that year would bring and not realising that this revelation would be a life-long journey, a transformational spiritual discipline and a regular practice that has significantly changed how I navigate this life thing. So now, more than a year later, after many conversations with friends and family, many mistakes and a whole lot of learning, unlearning and relearning, here’s what I’ve discovered:
1. Rest is a gift from God but it requires faith to receive it.
Gifts from God are often a result of His grace. It’s taken very kind, loving and generous friends for me to realise just how terrible I was at receiving gifts from people, and that in turn made me realise how terrible I was at receiving from God too. We may feel undeserving or not worthy of a really good gift, rest in Him being one of them. But it takes faith to enter into the rest of God and faith to remain there. It also takes humility to accept and receive it. But the truth is He loves you enough to give it freely and generously. Allow Him.
“And to whom did He swear [an oath] that they would not enter His rest, but to those who disobeyed [those who would not listen to His word]? So we see that they were not able to enter [into His rest—the promised land] because of unbelief and an unwillingness to trust in God.”
Hebrews 3:18-19 [AMP]
2. Rest is not about being lazy, but about recovery.
Rest is being able to know when to work and when to rest. It’s being able to work from rest rather than work to rest. There’s a difference — hear me out. When we work from rest, we work and serve and give from a place that is far deeper than our own ability. We work from the gift (remember point 1) and the gracious supply we have in Christ to fulfil whatever He’s called us to. When we work to rest, we’re relying on our own human ability, which has limits. We’re also not exercising faith to believe that we can access strength, resource and help from God’s provision whether that’s through practical resources or through the help of others. We can then give that reserve in our tanks into prioritising our recovery so that we can be filled back up to go again. That leads me to my third point.
3. Rest is about refreshment.
We need to learn how to take time to learn what energises us and what doesn’t. This involves knowing our limits and how we are handling (or not properly handling) the demands and responsibilities of our everyday lives. It’s about making more deposits and less withdrawals, whether thats spiritually, emotionally, mentally or relationally. Rest is also about realignment and it’s in the realigning of our inner being that we find refreshment. I personally believe that we are only truly spiritually refreshed in the presence of God, but the thing is, we shouldn’t have to wait until we’re depleted or our tanks have run dry to position ourselves where we’ve been graced to be.
Our Spirit is designed to be refreshed every day. In the words of Jesus as He taught His disciples how they should pray, He teaches them to pray “…give us this day our daily bread…” Not only does this allude to our physical needs but it involves our spiritual needs too because in Matthew 4:4 Jesus tells us that “People do not live by bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
To step outside of God’s rest in many ways is an act of disobedience. God’s rest brings about an alignment and a trust in God’s rhythms of doing things. Even God rested after He created all things. A hustle culture and the increasing demands of life, work, family or ministry (the list could go on) can lead us to doing very good things at the detriment of our souls.
Friend, there’s an invitation from Jesus waiting for you to live, to work and to simply exist from a place of His divine rest. This is a liberating reality that I’ve only found possible in Him. This doesn’t mean you’re void of the pressure of this life. It just means you have access to something that can bring joy in the most challenging circumstances, and peace even in the midst of despair. I hope you can step into the fullness of that, especially in this season.