I’ve learned a lot about rest from people in Scripture. Seeing their lives with fresh eyes, I’ve seen things I had not realized: How blessed rest is. How different it looks from what we often think. And how much in our lives can keep us from it.

One of my first aha moments, and one of the most crucial, came as I read the story of the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt and their journey to the Promised Land. During a wilderness time in my own life, God showed me what he had also showed them:

1. Entering rest requires pressing in to go where you haven’t believed it possible to go.

It’s a challenge, a lifelong journey. Yet moment by moment, day by day, God gives wisdom. He gives grace. And he does so even in the silences when we may not think he is there, or cares, at all.

As we come to him each next time that we find ourselves weary, burdened, afraid, ready to quit, he makes a way where there is none for us to take the next step, and the next – from rest, into rest.

He gives us freedom to choose whether to believe him, whether to go with him. Yet he never stops urging us to trust him and to choose what is essential to life.

Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest. (Heb. 4:11)

Signposts can help. Signposts, placed on the path by people who came before, can show us when we’re headed the wrong direction. They can point us the right way.

This blog post identifies 12 signposts I’ve seen in the Word and benefited from myself. I explore them more fully in other writings, including other blog posts and a book titled, Return to Your Rest: A Spirit-to-spirit Journey.

I’ve pointed out signpost #1 above. Here are the other 11.

➡️

From the lives of the ancient Israelites, I learned two more things I had not considered:

2. Our Lord has designed rest as a place to live, and as a pause we regularly take. We enjoy either aspect of rest only as we learn to embrace both.

In the Old Testament, rest had to do with a time – and a place. God gave his people a land that he intended to become a place of rest. He gave them a day of the week that he intended to be a time for rest.

Now, the Father has given his Son, so that all who receive him can live in him. Regardless where we find ourselves physically, our Lord himself is our land of rest.

Now, the Father and Son have sent the Spirit, to live in us and guide us into all truth. Moment by moment, day by day, the Spirit of Christ makes known to us the times for rest our Lord has established for us.

Ah, but much wars against our living from a place of rest. Much wars against our finding the time to rest.

3. The enemy of rest is not busyness alone. A prime enemy of rest is unbelief.

This unbelief may surface when life triggers turmoil in our soul – and instead of acknowledging our feelings, desires and thoughts, and submitting them to God, we let our inner disquiet drive us. Undone, we take matters into our own hands.

I love the Lord. And also, I am no stranger to unbelief. It rose up within me out of nowhere recently, attacking, throttling, seeking to devour. It took me a while to find the will, and the voice, to cry, “I believe, Lord! Help my unbelief!”

Not only did God hear that cry. He prompted it – by showing me what was overtaking me, and by reminding me that the Israelites were not able to enter his rest “because of their unbelief.”

So now, I remind myself, and whoever else may need to remember:

Since Christ is so much superior, the Holy Spirit warns us to listen to him, to be careful to hear his voice today and not let our hearts become set against him, as the people of Israel did. They steeled themselves against his love and complained against him in the desert while he was testing them. (Heb. 3:7-8 TLB)

Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. (Heb. 3:7)

⬆️

Other things within us and around us war against rest too. Eight people in the Gospels have helped me see just how varied the enemies of rest are.

Each is a unique person with a unique story. But all eight have this in common:

Something in their lives warred against rest. They came to Jesus. He exposed what was hindering – and offered to free them from it. They followed him. On the journey, he taught them, and brought them, rest.

Their stories show me: Rest looks very different from the boring, time-wasting, counterproductive thing that our culture assumes it to be.

Real rest is at once robust and refreshing, life-giving and calming, fruitful and wise. That’s why the enemy of our soul fights so hard, in so many ways, to keep us from it.

Here, then, are seven more signposts from eight people whose lives shout: Jesus makes the way!

⬇️

First up, Nathanael, one of Jesus’ disciples who was also called Bartholomew.

I see Nathanael as a hidden treasure. Hidden, because it’s easy to read right past him in Scripture. A treasure, because as far as we know, he did what no one else did: A man who might have been “somebody” in the religious establishment of his day instead became one of the twelve.

Here’s one signpost from Nathanael’s life:

4. Entering rest requires recognizing when I’m sitting under a fig tree that can never produce what it promises. Seeing, I refuse the lie: “Cling to the status quo, and all will be well.”

In particular, entering rest requires choosing to go with Jesus, rather than clinging to any religious structure, even one that promises me purpose and significance, even one I identify with the one true God and his Word. Regardless what people may think, regardless what roles I may forfeit, I yield to the Spirit of Christ, instead of trying to protect a system or my place in it.

You’re a jewel, Nathanael. You have taught me so much.

➡️

So have the sisters, Mary and Martha. Especially, they’ve taught me to reject two things that, most of my life, I thought a “good Christian girl” had to shoulder. Martha shows me:

5. Rest is refusing false responsibility. It’s not doing what Jesus says is not mine to undertake.

That requires learning to recognize his voice. It requires humbling my soul, because being “worried and upset about many things” may make me feel significant, or approved.

Rest is rejecting the lie that living on overload pleases God. It’s rejecting the especially insidious lie that ministry overload pleases God.

On the flip side: Mary once sat at Jesus’ feet when her sister wanted help in the kitchen. Another time Mary expressed her love for Jesus, and her faith in him, by walking into a banquet hall full of people and pouring perfume on his feet. She shows me:

6. Rest is refusing false guilt. It’s calmly staying the course when I’m doing what pleases Jesus, but others disapprove.

⬅️

Matthew and Zacchaeus were tax collectors. That meant: They had wealth and clout – and they were not liked.

On the day Jesus saw Matthew collecting taxes, and on the different day when he saw Zacchaeus up a tree, Jesus stopped and looked. Not with derision. Not with disgust.

Jesus looked past the outward appearance, past what might have made other people kowtow to them, or count them as scum.

Jesus saw two human beings. He spoke personally to each. He ate in both their homes. And he found two people hungry to know him, regardless the cost.

Both men came to Jesus. And then, in very different ways, each significantly changed course. Matthew became one of Jesus’ twelve disciples. Zacchaeus became a godly tax collector, something many people thought no one could be.

Matthew and Zacchaeus remind me:

7. Rest lies in identifying what it is I’ve falsely believed would make me whole or happy, and laying it at Jesus’ feet.

Rest lies in choosing what pride or fear would forbid me to do. Throwing caution to the wind, I humble myself to do what others may call “ludicrous.” I step out in courage and faith. As I do, I find: The Lord is there, and he’s welcoming me.

↩️

Mary Magdalene came to Jesus, and followed him faithfully the rest of her life. Repeatedly, she stuck her neck out in order to do that. I’ve written a whole post about her here.

Remember Mary, standing at the empty tomb, devastated, because she knew Jesus’ body was gone, and she thought it had been stolen. Remember what happened when her Lord called her by name.

That moment in Mary’s life reminds me:

8. Rest is knowing my Lord and his truth, Spirit-to-spirit. It’s letting him calm me and refocus me when my mind and emotions have run, screaming, the wrong way. It’s hearing in my inmost being when he himself calls my name.

⤴️

Ah, the man called Legion. Before meeting Jesus, he was demonized, tormented, frightening and self-harming.

When he saw Jesus a long way off, he ran and bowed in worship before him – then howled in protest, “What business do you have, Jesus, Son of the High God, messing with me? I swear to God, don’t give me a hard time!” (Mark 5:7 MSG)

Jesus did not rebuke him. He didn’t tell him to go away until he could make up his mind and clean up his act. Oh, no. Conflicted as that man was, he had come to Jesus.

The Lord received him, and delivered him.

When the townspeople came running to see what had happened, they found a person who had been naked, howling, homeless and hopeless – now clothed, calm and ready with his whole heart to go with God.

I was a long-time Christian, well into adulthood, when God began pointing out double-mindedness in my life and calling me out from it. I wanted to follow Christ fully. But I didn’t want following him “to give me a hard time.”

The man called Legion taught me to keep bowing at Jesus’ feet, ambivalence and all. He seemed to say, “If Jesus could free me to follow fully, he can free you too.”

What a precious signpost he has left for me. It tells me:

9. Rest is freedom from double-mindedness. When I live from a place of rest, my words and actions match.

And I can enter that rest because:

The Lord has died and risen again to open the way for “whosoever” to come to him. Even hordes of demons cannot stop me when I make that choice.

🔄

Mary, the mother of Jesus, was a woman highly favored by God, a woman of courage and faith.

Because of that, we may fail to notice that she made some big missteps during her Son’s three years of ministry. As a result of her own preconceptions, and the lies she heard from others she trusted and loved, Jesus’ mom became confused about what was, and was not, true.

Twice, she stepped in publicly to intervene, when Jesus was not doing what she thought he should be doing – or was doing what she thought he should not. As a result, she created a distance between herself and her Son, a distance that remained, until: she stood with him at the cross, and she waited for his Spirit in that upper room.

I’ve learned much from this Mary, too. Including:

10. Rest comes when I surrender to Christ. I’m not the one calling the shots; he is.

That involves continually letting him show me when I’m “working him” to get what I want, and when I’m truly seeking to know and do his will.

Thankfully, even when I get off the godly path onto a religious one, I can return to rest. Just like Mary, Jesus’ mom.

↪️

Back in the Old Testament, in the Psalms, I learned from David the shepherd-king:

11. Rest? It restores.

I’ve come to see Psalm 23 as a song of rest, that captures the essence of everything else on this topic that God has been teaching me. It begins:

The Lord is my shepherd:
I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures.
He leads me beside still waters.
He restores my soul.
He leads me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake. (vv. 1-3 ESV)

As I’ve learned both to be still, and to move, with the Lord my shepherd, in the unforced rhythms of grace, he has truly restored my soul.

⬇️

And finally, the words of Christ himself have taught me:

12. If what you’re getting isn’t rest, where you’re going isn’t to Jesus.

This realization was perhaps my biggest aha moment on this journey. I’ve written a lot more about it in Return to Your Rest, and in the posts, The blessing of rest and Dear weary one, can we talk about the spirit realm?

If you’ve been immersed in church culture, it’s crucial for you to know, too:

Whatever drives you to exhaustion is a cruel taskmaster, not the Lord Jesus Christ.

He is gentle, faithful and true, and in Matthew 11:28 he has promised:

Come to ME,
all you who are weary and burdened,
and I will give you rest.

---

This is an updated and expanded version of a post published June 20, 2016. The text in italics is quoted from Return to Your Rest: A Spirit-to-spirit Journey.

Image by MikesPhotos from Pixabay

See also

• Song of rest
• The blessing of rest
• The enemies of rest
• Time out
• Dear weary one, can we talk about the spirit realm?
• He restores my soul: Resting in God’s unforced rhythms
• The Rest of her story: Mary Magdalene

In the video below Beckah Shae, sings a wonderful song simply titled, “Rest.” Would you do that as you listen? Would you close your eyes and breathe in the invitation of Christ himself?