I poured my Magic Elixir of Waketitude and put on my Pandora. Some days I write before I do any reading because inspiration has already hit. Other days I do part or all of my reading first and hope that something that I read or hear in the music provides some inspiration. One of the verses I read this morning may be familiar: Matthew 11:28 -
Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
It may not surprise anyone to read that when I first came across that verse this morning I thought oh wow, that is for me this morning, and there is my solution to my lack of rest! But then something said wait a minute, I'm already spending the majority of the time I am laying in bed unable to sleep either praying or meditating. I spend the last bit of my waking hours alone with God, and the first part of almost every day is spent in prayer, study, and ministry. If my first thought when I come across that verse is that I need to do more or better so that maybe I can get some sleep, then I'm getting off track somewhere.
First the call to come to Jesus is to respond to the heart of God and lean on His grace. It's not a call to better performance. Any time we react to the Word of God by putting the weight of the work on our own shoulders rather than on the cross we are interpreting something wrong. Don't get me wrong, there is work for us to do. It is not easy to walk with God; it's impossible. And it's not easy to set aside, deny, and sacrifice self in order to take up our cross and follow Jesus in absolute surrender to the will of God above our own. It often feels a lot like suicide. The first step in a successful walk with God is to realize that we can't, we can not control ourselves or live right on our own power or in our own strength. We need the power of God to do what we can't do on our own. We surrender to God's will and care for our life to gain access to that power and be reunited in relationship with Him. It's a matter of grace. He is the transformer; we are the transformed. He removes the chains of addiction, sin and the bondage of self; we allow Him to do it.
Then there is the second little detail about that verse, which is that we often take it out of context. It's not necessarily wrong that if your job, sleep cycle, sickness, etc. is making you weary, you can come to Jesus for your rest. The Spirit is the Comforter, and rest is comforting. He cares for us and gives us what we need, and when we are exhausted, we need rest. But that verse is actually very specific. The weary here is a particular kind of weariness that exists in the life of a very specific group of people. Jesus is telling the religious folk who belong to God that if they are miserable, tired and worn out (weary) of spinning their wheels and killing themselves trying to live up to an impossible standard, if they are sick and tired of pretending to be perfect and striving for perfection while feeling the weight and shame of failure, then He is the answer, if they are smothering and being crushed under the weight of moralism, they can come to Him and put their trust in Him and He will give them rest from all of that, because He will remove the yoke that tells them they have to pull the perfect law alone. He will pour out His grace, His power to do what we can't do in our own power, over their lives.
No, that verse wasn't a reminder to pray more, spend more time with God, so that I can get some sleep. Sometimes we jump at a sign and go running off in the wrong direction before we check to make sure that the needle in our spiritual compass is pointing to true North. God does speak to us, and He will do so every day if we will listen. He speaks to us through His Word, in the lyrics, or even the music of a song, in something we see in the world around us, in the stillness and the silence. God can even speak to us from the mouths of the asses we traveling through our day with (see Numbers 22:21-39). But just because God is speaking doesn't mean that we are listening, and it doesn't mean that we are understanding correctly enough to make an instinctive and instant response and be right in our action.
His ways are not ours, and our thoughts are not like His, so it doesn't make sense to think that our default or knee-jerk reaction to Him speaking to us is correct. We run everything we see and hear and feel through filters. We start with filters of self, and we have to realign and rerun the message through the filters of the Spirit. We test every word, every spirit, every message and sign to see if it is true, and the first thing we have to test is our reaction, what filters are we using. If the pressure is on us to perform then we are using the wrong filter. If the call is to submit and let God do the work we are on much better footing to interpret correctly what we are hearing. If what we are hearing says we are loved as we are but need to be made more like Jesus, what a beautiful and true message we are receiving. But if we are hearing that God will love and bless us and give us what we need if we do better, if we can be good enough, the filter needs to be changed.
Today let us remember that we will never be good enough without the goodness of Jesus taking our place. Let us remember that our filters are never going to be quite right, but we have been given the Spirit who can teach us and give us understanding. When we filter what we see and hear through Him, we can trust Him to lead us the right direction and on the right path. Let us always take the time to test our filters, to make sure that how we are interpreting things lines up with the context of Scripture that says the weight of performance is on Christ and that God loves us and did all the work necessary to bring us to Himself before we react.
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