Rest in Christ for Restless Hearts

This is an excerpt from Made for Him | Rest in Christ for Restless Hearts

***

Our world lives in constant motion. If you look outside your window, movement of some kind meets you—a car driving down the road, a person walking by, a plane flying overhead. What if all this motion stopped? And what if all you heard and saw was silence? It would feel strange to us, almost like something was wrong. But, if we stayed in it long enough, it would begin to feel right. Your heart would begin to slow down. Your thoughts would not race as much anymore. Your body would not feel the need to jump into movement. The reality is that often, rest in our day and age is not normal. The need for speed in our society propels us to live in perpetual motion with no stopping. Rest used to be a rewarding reality. Now it can make us feel guilty. But if we took a step back and examined ourselves, we would see a tension in us between the need to keep moving while also craving rest. Too often, we ignore the impulse to rest, but our need for it points to a greater truth that we should acknowledge: God made rest for us.

This rest is different from what we might think. It does not exactly mean a rest that comes from being still or quiet. While it involves those things, it is not the ultimate thing. Rest is a journey toward wholeness. Our desire and need for rest speak to the underlying reality that we were created for wholeness, not brokenness. When we open Scripture, we see the story of that journey woven throughout its pages. We see a people hungry for rest and a God leading His people toward that end. But this journey does not just involve the people in Scripture; it involves you and me. In Psalm 116:7, David says to his soul, “return to your rest.” Every one of us is on a journey to return to our rest. By starting at the beginning of the Bible and journeying through, we will see how the theme of rest unfolds and develops throughout Scripture. In doing so, we will learn what God’s Word has to say about our rest and how to return to it.

If you feel restless today, you are not alone. Our entire world, including creation, is crying out for permanent rest and renewal. But the rest we are searching for is not found in a place but a person. David writes in Psalm 62:1, “I am at rest in God alone; my salvation comes from him.”

The pursuit of wholeness is only made possible by and through Jesus Christ. His death and resurrection made the way for mankind’s brokenness to be mended and restless hearts to be settled. But this is only part of the fullness we are to receive through His rest. God leads our journey toward wholeness. He is bringing us to a permanent state of eternal rest. We await the day when God will set all things right, restoring what once was broken and setting the world in neverending peace. From Eden to eternity, Scripture points us to God’s plan of liberation, where all of His creation will experience everlasting rest.

***

If you find yourself in need of rest, pick up a copy of Made for Him | Rest in Christ for Restless Hearts today!