Rest

Come to me all who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest - Jesus. (Matthew 11:38) 

I am not good at resting. 

I can sit still but I cannot be still. 

I can do nothing but I can never really completely stop. 

My brain constantly goes a million ways at a time, with no intention of ever stopping. 

It's exhausting and energizing all in the same moment. 

Lately I have needed to rest, I mean really needed to rest. 

I've been getting sick, forcing me to take way too many days off work and just not being able to do anything well. 

But as soon as I have to let my body and mind rest, I cannot. 

I think of a million things I could be doing. 

I stress about things I need to do or haven't done. 

I realized it's because I feel like it's a waste of time. 

I feel useless. 

If I sit and do nothing then I am essentially achieving nothing. 

I got the afternoon off a few weeks ago and though I was excited i knew I would not be able to rest. 

I made plans to do something but not focus on me, perfect! 

Well it didn't end up happening and instead I played my phone for 3 hours before I gave up waiting and went home. 

The whole entire time I was so frustrated. I could have rested, I was still but not at all resting. 

I was exhausting myself. 

I felt like I had wasted my whole day, I got home and went to bed but still felt I was meant to be doing something else. 

Thing is though even Jesus rested. 

Even he got away from it all, even he slept and he tells us to do the same. 

His intention is always for us to draw from him and then pour that out upon our lives. 

He intends for us to give out of the overflow, but if we are not getting from him what are we outputting? 

Essentially it means we are doing it in our own strength and that's why it's so unbelievingly exhausting. 

So I'm working on it. I'm making time to draw from him daily and I'm noticing an ease about my days. 

I'm daily reminding myself to slow down in hopes that one day I can completely be still.  

Soon you will understand.

He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” (John 13:6-7 NIV)

I have to say that I completely get where Peter is coming from here, I can relate to his confusion and I understand his hesitation. 

If you see it from his perspective this is the most Holy person on earth, someone without a single flaw or faliure, wanting to wash their very dirty feet. 

It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. 

I never understood why Jesus would want to be in our mess with us, why he would want to wash us of it. 

Our very first instinct is to hide it from him, to put forth to him only our best. We give him what we think he wants and leave the rest out. 

We are always so concerned with making sure he and everybody else sees the best of us, the best of our worship, the best of our serving and the best of our character. 

This concerns most us so much that as soon as he comes to something messy or imperfect within us we don't want him to have to deal with it, so we try to do it on our own.  

 We perceive that He is far higher then our mess as if it would somehow taint him as it has us. 

But here he says so clearly "you don't know why I am doing this, but soon you will understand" This concept is honestly so incredibly hard for me to grasp. I don't do uncertainty well, not knowing what might happen tends to make me anxious. 

Which is funny cos with God not only do we never know what might happen, we often have absolutely no idea.  

I lived so much of my life hiding every imperfection from God, that I now know he could see the whole time, I never let anyone see my flaws or showed emotion, it was actually really exhausting. It came to point where I couldn't do it anymore, and when Jesus stepped in, I acted just like Peter did here. As soon as he stepped I. though, I realized I had no idea how to clean it up, all of me had spilled out for all to see and I was left with no choice. but to let him do would I could not. 

It was messy and it was by far the hardest season I have ever walked through, but in the end he was right. 

I do understand now. 

I know exactly why I had to go through it then and why I may have to "let him wash my feet" again in the future. 

It's only once we are out of the mess stronger and more refined then we were before that we understand why He does what He does. 

The hardest part being trusting him when we have no idea what's going. 

Forgiving when we don't know why. 

Letting go of things we are so sure we need to hold onto. 

Showing weaknesses that we have kept hidden. 

Talking about the hard stuff. 

Coming to him with the worst of us knowing that while he is higher then our mess, he is also in our mess with us and he intends to bring us out of it. 

We don't always need to know why God is doing what he is doing. 

We just need to trust him in it anyway, because soon we will understand.  

Starving.

I Love Sundays! They are my Favorite day of the week, they are busy and long but they are the best day. 

I see people that I don't get a chance to during the week, I get to worship, I get to serve and I get to watch my friends serve God and grow better at what they do. I get to see my family and I am refreshed again. Regardless of how bad or hard my week has been as soon as I'm there it honestly doesn't matter anymore. 

I noticed a pattern over the past couple of weeks that I thought was good but realized has been draining me. 

I noticed I was exhausted every other day of the week, just trying to get through my week waiting for Sunday. 

I was struggling through my work days with no refreshment, growing more tired and irritable just holding on until it got to another Sunday. It honestly left me exhausted. 

I was Starving. 

I was failing to actually feed myself and waiting for someone else to feed me every week and it wasn't enough. 

I knew in my head the importance of seeking God for myself, but put it down to not having time because I work long days. 

But in the same way I make time to eat and catch up with friends during the week. 

I need to make time to seek God for myself and let him speak to me. 

It's been a few days and I already feel and see a difference in me. 

I realized it's not that hard, it doesn't take long and it's crazy good for my soul. 

See ya Sunday! 

Does the voice of Evil sound sweet?

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ ” “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1-5 NIV)

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, 

How we expect the voice of evil to sound just that, Evil! 

Like on the movies with the devil on one shoulder and the angel on another. Each urging the person to choose their way. 

That's how we expect it to sound, so we know what it is and so we can avoid it. 

However it almost never does, it doesn't ever sound like it wants to hurt us otherwise I don't think we would follow that voice. 

I mean really, who in there right mind would follow something that sounds Evil and scary. 

It brings me to this question: did the serpent actually sound sweet to Eve? 

We always talk about how the fruit must have looked so sweet and juicy, but we never talk about how satan sounded to Eve when he tricked her into eating it. It says he was more crafty then all of the other animals, he was sneaky about it, his whole aim being for Eve to trust his word above God's. 

We assume he was all creepy and that if we had been in the same position we would have known it was him and not listened to him. (Genesis 3) 

But we do it all the time, because it never sounds like that. 

Compromise does not sound like it will hurt us, and then it does. 

Addiction always sounds like just this once or just once more, before it captures us. 

Sin never sounds like it will take us that far away from God, and then we find ourselves wondering how we got so lost. 

Because if it sounded Evil we would never listen to it. We would know and we would run. 

I think the only way to know for sure is to know Gods voice from all the others. Like when it says the sheep know my voice or when Mary knows It's Jesus as soon as he says her name. 

When we know his voice clearer then all the others it doesn't matter how sweet evil sounds. His voice is always much sweeter. 

Doing good.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. (Galatians 6:9) 

I'm going to be honest here and say that this verse frustrates me just a little bit. 

Lately because it's been on my mind everyday, not because I heard it or read about it but more then likely because I may have been inwardly getting tired of always doing what I need to do as apposed to what I want to be doing which to be honest, is often sleeping or watching tv till my eyes fall out. 

Sometimes "doing good" is hard, inconvenient and exhausting. 

It is always a choice. 

It means being the bigger person. 

It means giving without expecting to gain. 

It means choosing not act out on emotion or react before thinking how it will effect someone else. 

It means putting people before ourselves. 

And while I am still being honest, sometimes, I don't want to. 

Maybe that explains why I cannot for the life of me stop thinking about this verse. 

However today when I read it I was reminded of the second half " at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" 

As much as I would really love to know when that proper time will be, I am learning to be completely ok with doing good because it's bigger then my own little world, even if that means that "harvest" is not for me. 

It led me to ask myself.

What if my doing good is adding to someone else's harvest? 

What if my doing good is helping someone else not give up for a little longer? 

What if my doing good isn't actually about me? 

More then all this is the fact that while we could be right on the verge of giving up the harvest could be just a moment away. 

Loose your life: Find your life.

 “If you grasp and cling to life on your terms, you’ll lose it, but if you let that life go, you’ll get life on God’s terms. (Luke 17:33 MSG)

It's funny how all of a sudden this verse makes so much sense to me, when I had read it or heard it a thousand times and never been impacted. 

It seems we spend so much time trying to build our own life, wanting to do stuff on our own terms. 

We are doing stuff our own way and wondering why it's not working. 

Further more we are trying to get God to agree to our terms and follow our agenda. 

Yes! We definitely want his help and we need him to answer us, but we want him to do it our way. 

When what he is saying here is when you lay all that down, that's when you actually find your life the way it's supposed to be. 

You cannot choose God and take parts of your old self with you, it has to complete surrender.

It must be the whole of you. 

It's in that moment when you find your life being built up right before your eyes and God making things happen that you did not even consider being possible. 

It's in that moment that you find your agenda not even mattering because the second your trusting him with your whole self, you realize what he has for you is far greater in every way possible. 

It's when you feel like you have lost your ideal life that you turn around and find your actual life in Him. 

He speaks between the lines.

Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot. They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus. He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”). (John 20:11-16 NIV)

Sometimes all he says to me is

my name. 

And regardless of what going on in my mind and heart everything stops. 

Sometimes he repeats it until I can hear him over myself... 

Too often I do not listen, too often I still hold myself back, as if I am the better shield. 

Its always one word in the bible that captures me, I can read passage after passage and not actually focus enough to take in any of it. 

Until I see one thing that is clearer then anything, just one single word that makes total sense. 

I almost always cannot sit through a sermon and listen to a whole message. But he always gets me with one statement or one word. 

He speaks through my distraction and it's exactly what I need to hear. 

And time and time again all he needs to say is my name before I realize who it is that stands before me is far greater then what I think I cannot face. 

 I am stilled even if just for a moment. 

I breathe in the calmness of it. 

I just rest within him. 

Because in this very moment he speaks between the lines. 

He overpowers every distraction. 

He becomes greater then any feelings. 

He becomes louder then my thoughts. 

He stills me. 

In this moment.

He is.