RESTLESS

Restlessness is the condition of a person lacking rest. Rest is the absence of activity – not only physical activity but mental anxiety. True rest is sweet, and sometimes rare in life.

Constant worry is like sitting at railroad crossing gates listening to incessant warning bells and eye-straining flashing lights. The train contains scores of boxcars creeping along at 5 mph. You can’t go forward or back, the ringing in your head is incessant, and the caboose is not yet in sight. That is restlessness.

Like the endless freight train, the succession of worrisome thoughts can repeat over and over again. They may vary a little, yet they are just boxcars following boxcars in our heads.

Our bodies react to the strain of recurrent thoughts. Loss of appetite or binge eating may result. Sleep is poor but may be the only way to slow the harassment in our minds.

Restlessness may pursue us in our dreams. Mine have. Our dreams place us in impossible dilemmas or we may be fleeing from some evil in our dreams while true rest eludes us.

Like a child in an overwhelming emotional state we need someone to firmly embrace us with reassuring words such as “calm down”, “take a deep breath”, and “relax, I’m here; everything is under control.”

Calming an adult is more difficult than a child. We are less trusting as we get older, more complicated in our thinking and more deeply entrenched in our anxieties. Problems are usually multifaceted and no single quick solution is sufficient to bring our desired rest.

God is sufficient. God is willing. God is all-powerful enough to bring rest into our restlessness.

As I sit here writing this, I’ve just returned from a two-week plus trip to my dying mother’s bedside. It has been just seven days since she passed on. I’m sitting next to a large flowerpot of miniature roses in my living room. They’ve been sitting unmoved for many days. While I was gone all the buds grew out on extended stems beyond the leaves. They strained to grow quickly, even desperately, on long arching stems toward the light in the windows.

We should be like them, giving maximum effort to reach out to God’s light of life. The sun’s light journeyed 93 million miles to my windows, yet the roses did not refuse to extend a few inches to meet it.

This is a picture of God and us. In reality he has done all the work coming to earth in the person of the son of God, Jesus Christ. But he does require us to turn to him by faith with our little strength. Graciously, he meets with us to bring his light of peace and to our restless darkness, if we only turn our heads to meet his grace. The Lord invites us to do so.

The Lord Jesus said, “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 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 (Mat 11:28-30).

An invitation must be accepted. We have to accept his invitation because the apostle Peter wrote, “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time: Casting all your care upon him; for he cares for you” (1Pe 5:6-7).

If you are like me, you have found that it is hard to ask for help. That is why Peter first says we must humble ourselves before God, and only then can we cast our cares upon him. If we fail to humble ourselves then casting our cares upon him will be like reading a list of our grievances to God. It would be like we’re blaming God for our problems instead of coming to him for help in solving them.

Jesus reminded us of the uselessness of anxious thought. “Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knows that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow…(Mat 6:31-34).

One day Jesus was at the house of two sisters, Mary and Martha. Martha was all about being the perfect hostess for Jesus so she asked Jesus to tell Mary to stop sitting around listening to Jesus, and to help her with food prep.

You can hear the gentleness of Jesus’s reply to her in his simple explanation of Martha’s misplaced priorities. “Martha, Martha,” he said, “ You are careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Jesus pinpointed her restlessness. Her priorities were well-intentioned, but out of order. Mary’s attention on Jesus’s words would bring peace that outlasts the food Martha was preparing. When Jesus mentions that Martha was anxious about “many things” he was telling her that there was a pattern to her life that needed changing. It wasn’t really about hospitality.

To appropriate the peace of God in our lives we need a deeper spiritual relationship with God. Spiritual life refers to a growing trust in the one true personal God (not a “force”). It is about increasing faith, learning about God’s person and receiving God’s words in the Bible as personal words to us.

Often when I talk to people about a personal relationship with God through his word (the Bible), I will get a response such as “You can’t take the Bible so literally; you should not worship the Bible, you should worship God.”

I strongly reject such a separation between God and the Bible. (Look for other blogs where I discuss the unity of God and his word more completely.) For now, I hold to the truth that the Bible is not an accident nor a book of human design; but it is divinely planned, divinely implemented and divinely preserved.

To bring us back on subject, Mary “sat at Jesus his feet and heard his word.” And Jesus said that Mary had chosen the good part (his word) that would not be taken from her. The word of Jesus that Mary learned that day, would outlast the physical earthly presence of Jesus in Mary’s life. Jesus and his word are one.

God created everything physical by his word (Genesis 1). God made covenants with humanity using words (the 10 Commandments). God caused his word to become flesh and to live among us (Jesus Christ, John 1). God and his word are one.

Meditating on the words of God and praying personally to him will bring us into the peaceful rest of God. I want it, don’t you? To appropriate God’s rest we will need to accept Jesus’s words to Martha as a rebuke to us also. Fill in your name; “_____, _______, you are careful and troubled about many things.”

Ask forgiveness for wrong priorities and pray from your heart. Cast all your cares on him, because he cares for you. Jesus taught that God cares about every sparrow and therefore he certainly cares about you.

Pray the words of the Lord’s prayer and meditate on how Jesus taught us to pray to God as our “Father”. If you are still in confusion about who is your spiritual father, note that Jesus does not refer to any man on earth as a spiritual father but only our “Father who is in heaven.”

If you are tired of restlessness, then come personally to the true God of heaven who forgives us. Jesus died for our sins. He invites us into his presence.

And lastly remember the words of Jesus to restless Martha. He said to her that her restlessness was not caused just by her worries concerning being a good hostess at one event. He said she was careful and troubled about many things. Like Martha the only way we will get rid of restlessness in our lives is to change the habit of restlessness into the habit of resting in God’s faithfulness.