Finding Our Purpose: Resting in Him pt. 2

Ok, ok, so resting in the Lord is harder than it sounds, huh? Yeah, I admit, after writing the last blog I still, for some reason, had a problem taking my advice and resting in Him. Maybe it’s this feeling that if I sit back and rest, I am actually doing nothing. Well, that’s actually the point. Resting in the Lord is basically unloading our burdens, our fears, our shadows, our insecurities, our sins, and our iniquities and placing them at the Father’s feet. There is action in resting. Resting in the Lord isn’t passive, but quite the contrary; it is taking an action of trusting God, of faith in Him, and of unloading your burdens. So before anyone says “I can’t rest…I have too much to do and plus sitting back and doing nothing is not the way I want to do it,” you must realize that this “rest” in the Lord is hard work. The hard work you put into it is actually trusting that God will guide you and help you through whatever it is you need to go through. That’s much harder than any amount of “hard” work.

Resting in the Lord to find your purpose is a hard thing. The term find suggests that YOU are looking for something, but that’s just the issue…God has a purpose for you and it isn’t so much you looking for it as much as it is you waiting for Him to reveal it to you. Resting in the Lord requires patience and faith, which I will admit to you that I lack in both area from time to time, and sometimes at the same time. Resting in Him is a difficult task, but it’s something we were built to do. Too many times we get to a point where we decide that we are going to take the reins of our lives and go from hobby to hobby, job to job, etc… so that we can have the ultimate control, but what we end up finding is that living in such a way leaves us empty and, somehow, scarred. God designed us to rest. Genesis 2:2-3 “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.” God’s desire for us is to be like Him. We must take time to rest so that we can spend that time connecting with our Father. It is difficult, if not impossible, to maintain a relationship if you don’t invest in it. So when you aren’t resting in the Lord you aren’t investing in a deeper relationship with Him. If you aren’t in communion with Him, how then can He reveal His greater purpose for your life to you?

We get so busy in our lives, always on the move, always trying new things, always…doing. We aren’t human doings, we are human beings and in that we need to remember to “be.” Psalm 46:10 “’Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’” We must “be” still and trust the Lord. Let me challenge each of you, and myself included, to be still in the Lord. Stop filling your schedule with tasks and hobbies and instead let the Lord move in you. Let Him take the reins for a while and you can rest in Him. In this you will find peace and through this He will show you His purpose for you and me.