Rest For Our Souls. by Laurie Jackson: 2/15/2012
I’m only blogging today because I told myself that I wanted to write at least one blog a month. Last month I exceeded this and put up three blogs. I usually go off total inspiration though so I’m not sure if this will take or not. I thought I would just start typing and something would inspire me and then I could pay-it-forward.
I heard God today. For some of you this sounds weird for others it sounds wow and for those that hear God often, it just sounds normal. Well, I haven’t been ignoring God but I have been distracted with worry and fear lately. I’ve finally calmed down and heard God tell me to be child-like again and just believe what He’s taught me. This gave me an immediate restful feeling in my heart. Then this morning I heard Him tell me this again in more detail. I’m not going to blog about what He told me but what is beginning to inspire me to blog now, is the fact that we can all hear the God of the universe and depending on what you think of Him this could make you happy, sad or even mad and or scared to death. For me, because I know that He is good and loving, I was happy to hear Him this morning. It took many years of my life, to even trust that God was a good and loving God. He had to prove this to me over and over and I found out that He was happy to heal my heart from fear and distrust over and over again. He is indeed patient and knows why a person would think bad of Him. He gets it, so don’t worry about being angry at Him. Just talk to Him about this or yell to Him about it like I did for years. He can handle us. We don’t scare Him one bit.
I realized that hearing Him only requires me to soften my heart toward Him. A Softened heart, makes me think of a trusting child-like person. So because my heart was able to hear Him, I did. I think it’s easy to soften our hearts. We can actually pray that God will help us soften our hearts. By the time I pray this, I’m usually already participating in humbling my heart before Him anyway. I’m thinking that we get distracted and this can make our hearts forget His amazing presence and help in our lives. It’s easy for me to be distracted with worry. New worry, stuff that is new to my life, like new challenges or old ones I haven’t dealt with for a long time.
Now that I’m restful, I’m realizing how God himself brought me here. Once He gets you to know Him and trust Him a little, our hearts have a natural longing to stay in this restful place. We crave it! When this place of rest gets disturb we notice it. Sometimes it takes me awhile to notice, but eventually I get tired of being tired.
I’m not sure if I’ve communicated to anyone but at least I wrote a February blog. This verse comes to mind as well. What I think it means by the word “religion” in this verse, is when we get “none relational with God” so I go about my life kinda ignoring Him and or avoiding Him because hearing Him, requires me to soften my heart and believe like a child that He is very real and present. This requires me to not be so heady about life or try to figure it all out by myself. Matthew 11:28 I love it from the Message version so here is what I’ll end this blog with:
28“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? (“none relational with God”) Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. 29Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. 30Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
