finding His rest.
Do you need rest?
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” Matthew 11:28-29
I’ve been pondering on this verse since last week. Calvin and I were just marveling at how we can read something we’ve read a hundred times, and God reveals something new. Just as Hebrews says, the Word is “living and active.” This hit me differently when I read it, so I keep processing and going back to it. I feel it’s safe to say that we all long for rest - whether it’s physical rest, emotional rest, spiritual rest, or a combination. We do carry so many burdens. At the same time, we sometimes want solutions but don’t want to put in the work or the time. Sure, it’d be nice to snap our fingers and make everything okay. And yet we are called to so much more. To something much richer and ultimately more rewarding - that is, to know Jesus Himself.
Jesus says to come to Him for rest, which is the part I tended to focus on. The first step is to come, but let’s not overlook the following, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me.” So what does this mean, and what does this look like? A yoke was a harness used by oxen or other animals to ease the work of hauling a load. It also represented servitude or the state of being subject to someone of greater power. So when Jesus said to take His yoke, this means that we are to submit ourselves to Him and His ways. This only comes by way of obedience. We are all yoked to something - we are yoked to sin, or we are yoked to Jesus. We also all have a choice. We can continue on our own, yielding to our ways, thoughts, and desires, or we can carry His yoke, which He promises is “easy and light.”
First, we come, then we take His yoke, and finally - we learn from Him. Friends, we cannot learn from Him if we do not spend time getting to know Him through His Word. How else can we know the ways of God? How else can we know His heart? I remember long ago asking and wondering how I could hear God’s voice. I desperately wanted to, but to be honest, I wasn’t putting in the time. I wanted the answer without a relationship. Our relationship with God is no different than any other relationship. We cannot know someone that we do not spend time with, that we do not talk to, that we do not make a priority. So how can we expect to occasionally want to dump our problems on Him and find peace? A devotion I read recently put it this way, “He isn’t asking us simply to cast our burdens on Him, but also to humble ourselves and submit to His teaching. If we are willing to come underneath Him as our Teacher, then we no longer carry the burden of figuring out life on our own. And in freedom, we are able to live life under the power and influence of the Holy Spirit. God tells you to stop working in your own strength, yoke yourself to His teaching, and rid yourself of all the stress and pressure of the world.”
Oh, friends, He will meet us when we come to Him. It’s a promise. One of my favorite Scriptures is Jeremiah 29:13, “You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.” Jesus reiterates this in the gospels saying, “Seek and you will find.” The word “seek” is active, not passive. To seek something, we must search for it. Here, the verb tense does not refer to a singular action but a continual one. “Keep on seeking” would convey the best meaning of the text. It’s not enough to just want it. We must seek “to find out, as by thinking, meditating, reasoning, enquiring into to obtain.”
I know that perhaps that doesn’t sound “easy,” and well, we like easy. Jesus told us the Way would be hard, which is why He refers to it as the narrow road. He also tells us the other way will lead to destruction. I’ve experienced the bottom of the pit and back and can testify to this - His Way is not easy, but His Way is worth it.
So, keep on seeking. Keep on coming to Him. Keep on learning from Him. And you will find rest.
