It’s a cold winter morning;
Christmas has come and gone
And I find myself in the stillness of a time without papers, exams, or readings
In the stillness and solitude of my bedroom, I settle crosslegged in the center of my bed
My parched soul thirsty for time and space to reflect, to breathe, and to be with the Lord
As I prepare to enter into a new season, with no idea what God has in store
My Bible and a journal lay open in front of me
My eyes fall on a verse, words that feel like water to my parched soul
I get up from my bed and write those words on my bedroom whiteboard
They are nice words that speak to my weary soul
I don’t realize that in those words God is planting seeds for a harvest:
“Return to your rest, my soul, for the LORD has been good to you.” (Psalm 116:7)

As someone who grew up in church, I grew up surrounded by stories of the great lengths Christians would go to in the name of Christ – from missionaries who gave up everything to share the Gospel in distant lands, to martyrs who died for their faith in Jesus. As a child, I dreamed and imagined the great things I would do for Jesus in my lifetime. To trust Jesus meant to be willing and ready to take radical action in the name of my Christian faith. And I do still believe that God does indeed call His people to exercise their trust in Him in radical and uncomfortable ways at times. But a faith that finds its call in what we can do for Christ misses the point. 

Fast forward about 4 months to the very night that I had my “2×4 moment” during my New Testament class. I came home and flopped down on the couch to journal and process what I had just experienced. As I journaled about what it meant for me to really trust God with my life, those words written on my whiteboard came to mind: “Return to your rest.”

The most important and foundational thing that I learned through that season of fear is that my faith and trust in Jesus is not evidenced by the great things that I do for Him, but in resting in the work that He has accomplished for me. 

Sounds simple, right? Even easy—all we have to do is just stop doing. I don’t know about you, but as a (recovering) perfectionist that is a tough pill to swallow. 

It’s counterintuitive though, isn’t it? When we think of religion—be it Christianity or another religion—often what comes to mind is the list of things we must do (or abstain from doing) in order to live up to the expectations of whatever higher power we might have in mind. But in the Gospel that is all turned on its head, because in the Gospel we see that our salvation is not found in what we do but in what has been done for us. While we seek to strive and work to earn our own salvation, the gift extended to us is a righteousness that is credited to those who will receive it with open hands.

In the weeks that followed that moment of revelation, I picked up a book that provided an incredibly helpful metaphor as I sought to understand and practice what it meant to truly rest in Christ. In his book “Surrender to Love,” David Benner uses the picture of floating on water (something that—perhaps ironically—I have never been able to do). In order to be able to successfully float, you have to relax your body and cease any efforts to keep yourself afloat. The moment that you pick up your head to see how the floating is going, or try to do something to contribute to the floating, you begin to sink. 

Floating requires that we resist the urge to swim and rest our entire weight on the water, trusting that it will hold us.

Similarly, salvation requires that we resist the urge to strive and perform and rest the entire weight of our lives on Christ, trusting that He has accomplished all that is needed.

What I had to come to understand—what fear exposed in me—is that in all my perfectionism and striving, what I was really saying was something akin to; “Hey Jesus, what You did on the cross is cool and all, but I’ve got this—I can be perfect on my own, I don’t really need You.” 

I never would have said those words out loud, and in fact I would have vehemently denied and rebuked them. But they were what my life was speaking. And until I was willing to face that disturbing reality, things were never going to change. I was going to keep on thrashing around in the waters of religion, frantically trying to keep my head above water. 

“Our efforts to stay afloat may keep our head above water for a while, but eventually we tire, and eventually our efforts to keep afloat will drown us.” (David Benner, Surrender to Love)

The point is not the resting itself, as if the goal of the Christian life is to simply sit around all day seeking a state of perpetual inactivity. As the Apostle Paul reminds us in Ephesians 2:10, we were created to do good works that God has prepared in advance for us. God has a plan for our lives, and that plan requires our participation and cooperation with Him. The point is not the rest itself, it is what—or who—we are resting in. 

Resting does not preclude action, but it must precede it.

Immediately preceding the verse above where Paul tells us about the work that we are called to, he first lays an important foundation:

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” (Ephesians 2:8-9, emphasis mine)

Before I can do anything for Christ, I have to cease my strivings that ultimately seek to replace His work and receive what He has offered me—the invitation to rest in His grace. 

We rest because at the core of our faith is a trust that the work is finished. We rest because we can trust in what Christ accomplished on our behalf on the cross. Ultimately there is nothing left for us to do except to live our lives accordingly in the light of that reality. We don’t live to obtain, we live from what we have already obtained in Christ. 

May we know the grace of God deep in our souls, and rest in His provision. And may that rest empower us for lives of fruitful service in response to His great love for us.