I’m now a week out from my vacation, and I still have energy to spare. 

In my last post, I shared how God led me through a process so powerful that for the first time in my life, I was ready to go back to work before my vacation was over. This process involves rest, repentance, restoration, and renewal. 

Rest, as I summarized last week, is about freedom from regular strain or responsibility. We slow our pace, and stop doing some things altogether.

WORKING TO REST

In today’s society, we almost have to work hard at resting. It doesn’t come naturally for us. But rest is not an option. It is not a luxury. And it certainly isn’t a sign of laziness.

I find it fascinating that God had to command human beings to rest: “The seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work” (Exodus 20:10). By the time of Jesus, the teachers of the law had turned even the sabbath into something to do. Jesus felt compelled to explain, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). 

My paraphrase: “It’s good for you, dummies!”

What if rest isn’t a necessary evil? Hint: It isn’t. What if rest isn’t an intermission before the show goes on? What if rest is a rich and beautiful part of what it means to be fully alive?

I think we’re so foreign to rest that we need to re-learn how to do it.

AFRAID TO REST

FOMO (Fear of missing out) drives us to work harder, longer, and more efficiently. We rest so that we can work, instead of working so that we can rest. In many of our minds, resting isn’t living; it’s the recharging that makes the living possible.  We’re afraid that our worlds won’t keep spinning if we don’t attend to them constantly.

FOMO isn’t the only fear keeping us from resting. We’re also afraid of what bubbles up within us when we stop moving. Work and busyness are potent medications that keep our angst at bay. Rest is the regular detox we so desperately need, but we’re so fearful of withdrawl that we avoid it at all costs.

WHEN WE STOP MOVING

Make no mistake, when you stop moving, the real you will show up. The unresolved issues you’ve swept under the carpet will creep out. Your anger and frustration will surface. Your sadness, grief, and loneliness will swell like strong billows of the sea.

Please hear me—or better yet, hear the Holy Spirit: This is not bad. It’s good. This is not the devil attacking you. It’s your good Father, in his infinite kindness, allowing these things to surface so He can help you deal with them. The discomfort we feel when we stop moving is necessary. And God is waiting to join us in it.

When you let go of striving and simply rest, what emerges? What resistance? What anger, sadness, conviction, or temptations? What longing aches there? What inner monologues begin babbling? What disappointments make an appearance? What is my soul seeking? What feels absent, lacking, or missing?

These questions cannot be answered or healed when you won’t stop moving or working. But they don’t go away if you ignore them, or bury them with more work. They circle, multiply, fester. If they’re not dealt with, they’ll eventually cause you to crash.

The temptation on our vacation is to fill the space work occupied with a different kind of busyness. And while a little puttering around can be healthy and lifegiving, it can also become another kind of work. We’re not resting, in that case. We’re pivoting.

I think I need to remind some of you that rest is not work. 

RESTING FORWARD

You can’t rush rest. We simply must let our souls go fallow. We must give God silence to fill, stillness to stir, raw soil to seed.

Rest, though, is not enough. We need to learn to rest so God can work.

True revival occurs when our rest opens us to the Spirit’s work in repentance, restoration, and renewal. We’ll explore these in the next three posts.

For now, I don’t “Dare you to move,” as Switchfoot’s classic tune says. I dare you to stop moving. To rest. And while I can’t get into the next part of the process today, I’ll give you this prayer. When you rest, when ‘the stuff’ comes up, simply pray,

“Father, would you come and be perfectly one with me right now in this (your emotions / struggle).”

Then smile. Welcome him as he comes. That alone will begin to shift your inner world. See you next post!