“Our Lord Himself is the example of a disciplined life. He lived a holy life by sacrificing Himself to His Father; His words and His thinking were holy because He submitted His intelligence to His Father’s word, and He worked the works of God because He steadily submitted His will to His Father’s will; and as is the Master, so is the disciple.”
– Oswald Chambers
I ran across this video at the Stepping Up website. I thought it worth sharing.
“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28, NASB)
The command to come implies movement, you cannot stay where you are. If you are in need of rest you must move, you cannot stay still. It will not get better without action on your part. But that action needs to move you in closer proximity to Jesus.
To Jesus and to Jesus alone. Jesus is the only place to find lasting rest.
No-one is excluded from this promise. Anyone can come.
Who is not weary and heavy laden? Many of us work hard at maintaining the illusion that we have it all together, but let’s be honest. We don’t have it all together.
Too much of life is outside our control. We may influence, but we cannot control what goes on around us. We get tired from the burdens that we find ourselves carrying.
We can find rest by coming to Jesus with our burdens. The last lines of the hymn “Great is Thy Faithfulness” provide some insight as to what we can expect from Jesus:
Strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow,
Blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside!
Notice that the the only qualification that is required to obtain rest from Jesus is to come. All we have to do is show up and the rest ours. Why then do we seem to always come to Jesus as a last resort after trying all the other stuff we “know” that we should do?
Just come!
“Let us cease laying down to the saints long lists of ‘conditions’ of entering into the blessed life in Christ; and instead, as the primal preparation for leading them into the experience of this life, show them what their position, possessions, and privileges in Christ already are. Thus shall we truly work with the Holy Spirit, and thus shall we have more, and much more abiding fruit of our labors among the people of God.” – Miles Stanford in The Green Letters
It is far too common for church leaders to intimate that spiritual blessing is conditioned upon proper behavior. While statements like, “if you give of yourself more, you will experience blessing” or “service is the way to fellowship” are often well meant, they inadvertently damage a believers rest in the promises of God.
The only condition for receiving God’s blessing is to be in Christ. I am blessed because of my relationship with Jesus Christ and it is upon this relationship alone that blessing is conditioned.
I may not act as if I am blessed. I may not perceive that I am blessed. But if I am in Christ, I am blessed none-the-less. No-one can take that blessing away.
The problem is that I need to remember that this blessing is mine and live as though it is mine. As Miles Stanford states above, I have position in Christ, I have possessions in Christ and I have Privileges in Christ. If you are in Christ they are your blessings also.
We don’t need to earn these blessings; We could not earn them if we tried.We simply need to live as though they are ours.
Because they are.
