I Need a Break
“There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God.” Hebrews 4:9
One Sunday, in my Sunday School class, the question was asked, “What does God mean when He says for us to “‘rest’?” Most of the answers given had to do with physical rest, that is, ceasing from labor. For example, getting enough sleep at night, not overdoing it, not working until the point of sheer exhaustion or burn-out, and so forth. All of these answers are good answers. We can’t be our best at anything, including Christian service, if we are overly tired. God made our bodies to require sleep for rest, repair, and repose. Working, even in Christian service, to the point of exhaustion can leave us grumpy, resentful, and can harm our witness. So, yes, God does want us to get enough physical rest.
But what about mental rest? Sometimes I wish I could just turn off my thoughts and not think anything, but that’s not how our brains work, apparently. Even while we are sleeping, we are dreaming, even if we don’t remember our dreams when we wake up. I have theorized that when we wake up in somewhat of a depressed mood, it could be because of something that we dreamed that we couldn’t remember. They, whoever they are, say that our brain doesn’t know the difference between a dream and reality. If that is true, then my theory may have some validity. One time I dreamed that I stopped my car in front of my house and got out with the motor running. In a couple of seconds, my car started rolling backward, and I ran to try and stop it. I woke up in an anxious state and felt like I had actually been running after my car. I don’t like those kinds of dreams.
Godly rest also means something else, something that is necessary in our relationship with Him. To rest in Him means to place our complete trust in Him. He desires that we stop worrying, fretting, and trying to solve all our problems ourselves. We need to stop trying to figure everything out. Why did this happen? What’s next? What am I going to do? What if….? If you are like me, you try to overanalyze everything rather than trusting the Lord to make sense of it all. We know that we have reached a higher level of Christian maturity when we realize that we are not always going to understand why some things happen the way they do. There are things that happen that we don’t like, but God didn’t say that we had to like them. We just have to trust Him and know that He always has our back.
We know that God has a rest prepared for all those who have trusted in Christ because God Himself rested after completing His work of creation. He would not create a time and place of rest for Himself without considering those who belong to Him. He did not set aside the seventh day for a time of rest because He was tired after speaking the universe into existence. He doesn’t get tired. He never slumbers or sleeps (Psalm 121:4). God rested because the work of creation was finished (Genesis 2:2). Rest indicates an end of some work or effort. For the believer, eternal rest comes at the end of a life that hopefully produced much fruit for the kingdom of God, a life lived in honor of the One who provided protection, comfort, and hope in a world gone mad, and a looking forward to home in God’s eternal heaven.
The promise of rest was first given to the Hebrew people who left Egypt as God promised to go with them into the promised land (Exodus 33:14). However, because of unbelief in God’s promise, many of them never saw the promised land nor enjoyed the rest that was to be given to them. Those who did believe Him, though, were those who followed Him no matter the cost. The writer of the book of Hebrews wrote specifically to those Jews who had come to faith in Christ but were still wed to the law. They were finding it very difficult to turn from following the law as a means of pleasing God to following Christ and Christ alone. God’s offer of rest to their forefathers, the Hebrew people, was still in effect at the time of King David, not an offer of a physical “promised land”, but one that was spiritual, the promised land in God’s kingdom. It was about 500 years from the time of the Hebrews’ entrance into the promised land until the time of King David when God appointed and renewed His offer of rest, a spiritual rest, and warned His people that the day to accept His offer is now and to guard against hardening their hearts (Psalm 95:7-11).
The bottom line is to get enough physical rest, allow our minds to calm down and not fret so much, and, most of all, to rest in Christ and His promise to keep us safe and secure in His arms of love. Since Jesus is going to be up all night anyway, we might as well give Him all of our burdens, problems, and worries. If we could learn to do that, then we would probably be able to sleep better. It’s worth a try.