Sermonette: Come and Rest

Matthew 11:28-30 (NIV) “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. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

This verse has been my motto this summer. I work full time with a campus ministry. Though I LOVE what I do, at the end of the school year, I was tired, and had a tendency to just go through the motions. When summer hit, the Lord got my attention and highlighted this verse. He spoke to my heart and told me this summer He was going to teach me how to rest and develop healthy habits.

Within this, He revealed how I have a tendency to function in extremes—either I’m busy all the time, or I do nothing. I want to spend all my money, or I don’t want to spend any of it. I spend every moment of a day with people, or I don’t see anyone. I’ve taken steps toward improvement, but it is still a work in progress. Though I am prone to this extreme lifestyle, I believe it is something our culture teaches as well. We are told to get a job, have a side hustle, get married and have two or three kids, all while maintaining a healthy diet and exercise, keeping up a beautiful home, and a perfect yard.

Wow, who can do all that? (If you have successfully managed all that, kudos to you because I’m tired just thinking about it.)

But what happens when we can’t continue “the grind”? We function in the hustle until we get too tired and burned out, then we crash. In the crash, we take our exhaustion out on the people we love, and then try to find a solution. Finally, we take a two-week vacation or go on sabbatical, we come back from our break and do it all over again, because we didn’t learn how to rest, we just caught up a little. And sometimes our fun-packed vacations leave us more exhausted than life at home.

It’s crazy to me how our world got a glimpse of what it looked like to slow down and rest because of the COVID lockdown. But now restrictions are lifting and things are returning to a semblance of normal. We have also returned to our hustle and bustle, barely stopping to take a breath, a go-go-go kind of lifestyle. I think part of it is, we were stuck inside and away from people for such a long period of time, and now that we can be with others and do things, we feel guilty for taking a break. That is not how it should be.

So what do we do? The Bible tells us to rest, but our culture tells us to “get that bread,” get the work done, and achieve the American dream. So who do we listen to? How do we get out of this constant cycle?

If we look to the Bible, multiple times it tells those who follow and have a relationship with God, to look different from the world. It instructs us to not live in the way that unbelievers do, but instead try to make our lives look more like Jesus every day— in word and deed. If we are attempting to look like Jesus, then we need to know that Jesus rested. So if Jesus (the Son of God) rested, then we definitely need to rest!

During the month of July, we’re going to break down what it looks like to truly find rest, and how the Bible teaches us to rest. I encourage you to ask the Lord to help you evaluate your lifestyle and determine if you truly rest. Even when you have a day off—do you really feel rested afterward?

My first and most important point of finding rest is: Get alone with Jesus. Take time—even just 20 minutes—get alone, sit with God, shut off your phone, read a Psalm (Psalm 23 is good), and be still in front of the Creator of the Universe and see what happens. What do you have to lose?