Do You Need Rest?

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light." ~Matthew 11:28-30 (NIV)



We are a nation of stressed-out, anxious, sleep-deprived people, and the problem is getting worse. If it hasn't already reached epidemic proportions, it will soon. We keep ridiculous schedules, yet we wonder why we feel tired all the time and why we get burned out so frequently.



But there is a solution, and one that has been around for thousands of years. We MUST take time to rest.



This is so important that God instituted a Sabbath for that very purpose. The Hebrew word for Sabbath is SHABÀT, meaning 'cessation,' or 'time of rest.'



By the seventh day God had finished the work He had been doing; so on the seventh day He rested from all His work. And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done.     ~Genesis 2:2-3 (NIV)



Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the aliens within your gates. For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but He rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.     ~Exodus 20:8-11 (NIV)

If Almighty God rested from His work, should we, the finite and limited creatures that we are, do any less?It is so important to God that we rest, that He made it one of ten commandments. We need to rest from work to refresh and to recharge our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual batteries. God's laws were given to man as protective boundaries because He loves us. He made us and knows better than anyone our human limitations.

God's rest is still available to us today. When we get world-weary and burdened down, the only solution that will bring true rest is Jesus. Our worldly yokes are hard and heavy. They wear us out and often chafe against our souls. We were never meant to shoulder that kind of stress and busy-ness 24/7. When we let Him, Jesus carries the load with us. What an amazing promise from our amazing Savior!

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. ~ Psalm 91:1 (NIV)

Father God, thank You for loving us so much that You not only created the Sabbath rest, but also commanded that we keep it. Help us not to impose our man-made regulations on Your law, but to keep the spirit of Your law by taking time to rest. Thank You, Lord, for Jesus, our Savior, who willingly shoulders the load with us, and whose yoke is light and not burdensome. Thank You, Lord, for rest. May we use it to draw near to You, so that we might be better prepared to serve You with our lives.

In Jesus' name we pray, Amen