Are you weary to the depths of your soul? Do you long for rest? Have you lost track of the locus of control in your life and found that it has somehow fallen to external factors?
A soul at rest is a soul in harmony with reality. That means that it is not dependent on circumstance for it to be at rest or at peace. In fact a soul at rest is one that is able to make right decisions regardless of circumstance because it is in a right relationship with its Creator.
“How can you have been a follower of Jesus for so long and still look for reasons to not obey Him? Have you not experienced the benefit of doing what He says?”
Those are the thoughts that run through my mind as I sit and listen to soul weary Christians. For years and sometimes decades, these people have been reacting to life in the same manner as their pagan neighbours and then they wonder why life is so difficult and why they are so worn out with worry and anxiety and sometimes even a dread of the future. Do these people not know that following Jesus, obeying Jesus makes us like “trees planted by streams of water” (Psalm 1)? How can they not know that we are blessed when we don’t walk in the counsel of the wicked; when we don’t follow the pattern of sinners; or take advice from those who mock God?
How can you know Jesus and not get that?
Someone whose soul is at rest is someone who does not live as though God does not exist. God Himself says that those deny His existence (either literally or through negligence) are fools! Why would you deliberately copy the thoughts and behaviours of fools? It’s like the Israelites in the Old Testament who, only with the help of God, defeated their idol worshipping neighbours and then, and THEN those same Israelites began to worship the very same idols that the people that had been defeated had been worshipping!
If we want a soul at rest we must not live by human wisdom. It we do, we will be constantly making huge life decision mistakes. Instead, a soul at rest delights in God’s law (Psalm 119)
If you aim for anything less that total obedience to God and with His Spirit for help, you will never, ever find rest for your soul.
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