Exodus 31:17; Psalm 23:2-3; Acts 3:19; 1 John 1:19

Do we take rest seriously enough?

Especially when we see in Scripture, that even Almighty God rested after six days of work so if Almighty God needed rest, then how much more do we need to take our rest seriously?

Let’s look in Scripture at some examples of why we need rest and why it’s important —

1. (ex 31:17) firstly we see that it’s a sign for the Israelites of how much they need to rely upon God, so for today perhaps it should be an even greater sign that we need to rely on our relationship with the Lord amidst our busy lives. Secondly here we see the rest brings refreshment, which brings me to my next point;
2. (ps. 23:2-3) in this song we see David writing “he makes me lie down in green pastures”. Maybe David got into that place of being so busy he forgot to take time to rest. I wonder how many of us would be in David shoes that we think that the Christian Life or life in general, is about being busy before the Lord and doing lots of stuff and we forget to take rest but instead we say ‘Lord look at how wonderfully busy I am for you!’. Instead, it is a beautiful picture. In v. 3 to have rest we see brings refreshment and refreshing as ‘he makes me lie down’ in green pastures (sometimes life circumstances forces us to rest) and by still-waters to me that is a beautiful picture of how rest brings both a refreshment and refreshing to our busy lives.
3. (1 John 1:19) next our walk with the Lord is a walk with more clarity when we live in an attitude and awareness that sin hurts God and so confession of our sin brings us refreshment in the sense that God purifiers us and makes us clean so that we can walk with him, in our daily lives with a clean heart because of what Jesus has done.
4. (Acts 3:19) lastly it’s about repentance, we know when we mess up and realise that we’ve done something that’s not just hurt God but hurt ourselves. We need to repent, it’s to do a 180° turn and walk away from it, and ask God to help us to live differently. This is what the Bible means about repentance and when we do repent and turn away from that which hurts us and our relationship with God, He brings refreshment to us and I believe that’s in the sense Holy Spirit helps us and refreshes our lives to live differently.

There’s many other scriptures we could be drawn to about rest, however for now and in conclusion just in the scriptures considered we can see that rest is a divine call from Almighty God in the midst of busy lives and those around us to mark us out as different. Rest also helps us in our daily walk to live refreshed lives!