Last week I wrote about conflicts and challenges that oppose our ability to abide (rest) in the Lord, and I promised to add a part two. If you missed that post (Why Abiding in the Lord is Hard), be sure to read it. I wanted to write exclusively about the joy we find when we take the time to rest in the Lord, but the Holy Spirit urged me to instead contrast the lies that still might keep us from resting in Him. Next week I’ll focus more on the joy in abiding. Mature Christians may know much of what I’ll share here, and I urge you, please read this and then share it with those you know are struggling believers or nonbelievers who are exploring the Christian faith. God gave me a sense of urgency about the lies that separate us from this peace with God.
Let’s contrast the love and joy we have when we abide in the Lord versus the strife we would have in a home without that kindness. Jesus promised this rest in Matt.11:29, “My burden is easy, my yoke is light.” He wants us to genuinely enjoy our relationship with him and find it restful and peaceful. While God is joyfully kind let’s contrast cold hearted parents of olden days who said, “Children are to be seen and not heard.” I met a woman who told me she was raised in that kind of home, and her brother was an emotionally absent dad. I have met his son, who is also an emotionally absent dad to his children. I am sure these men simply copied the model of their parents. A friend told me her husband also grew up in that kind of home, and this man (in his 60’s) still struggles to think of God as a loving father.
When a dad will not talk to his children or really listen to them, they cannot rest in his love. As a result, we must dispel the myth that God does not want to listen to us, especially not when we are upset. The Holy Father wants a mutual relationship with us where we tell him everything, even our anger, doubt, fear and sorrow. Even if we are mad at God, he wants to hear from us. How comforted those children, in the cold homes, would have felt if their parents had wanted to hear all of the children’s words. Yet we get this gift, even if we came from homes where our parents did not listen to us enough. It is essential we recognize this difference. We must differentiate our earthly parents from our heavenly Dad and Jesus (since both are God).
Too many people have formal relationships with God, or no relationship at all. God seems like a distant being who is always angry with them. They imagine God is like those cold, old-fashioned parents. They imagine He does not want to hear from us except to hear us praise him once in a while. This is a tragic comparison, because God absolutely adores us. For veteran Christians, this is common knowledge. But we need to reassure baby Christians and people who don’t truly know the Lord that there is so much value in abiding in the Lord, because he adores us. Sometimes the hurting people have seen movies in which a loving dad adores his children and always wants to spend time with them. This might be a point for bridging the distance between our friends’ wrong view of God and the right view, via the loving dad comparison.
But I want to be sure I am also addressing mature Christians, because we might drift away from this joy in resting in the Lord too. Legalism can come between us and this wonderful relationship. So I will address both issues here, along with the wonder and joy we have when we simply rest. Legalism says we have to appease God. We do things to please him, usually out of our fear. But resting in the Lord comes because we are pleased WITH God. We do things for Him, because we find Him delightful. We do these acts because of our joy and love for him. Legalism will always rob us of our joy, because it is based in fear. While Scripture says we are to “fear” God (Proverbs 9:10, “The Fear of God is the beginning of wisdom,”) this means a reverence for God, not a terror of him. When we see how kind God is, we relax and trust him. Think of Jesus washing the 12 disciples’ feet. This was the lowest job the least loved servant did in a home. It was not considered an honorable job. But how good the feet felt after a good washing when these people had walked the hot, dirty roads in sandals. Jesus knew no one else wanted to wash the disciples’ feet. He loved them so, and thus he did it. In John 13:34, he said, “A new command I give you. Love one another. As I have loved you, so must you love one another.” Jesus adored them!
Jesus kept serving the down-cast. He met a scorned woman at the well and respected her. Jewish men did not even talk to Jewish women in public, and never a Samaritan at all. Yet Jesus spoke with a woman who was Samaritan and who had been married 5 times and was now living with a man, not her husband. Jesus showed her kindness, not judgment, even though he knew her past. She felt redeemed by him and believed he was the Messiah. But what is essential here is to see how he served her. Jesus ministered to the sick and lame and hurting people whom the rich, important people looked down on. He kept loving those who needed him most. We know this in our heads, but we must always let this truth sink into our hearts.
Jesus is not mad at us but so glad to have us come to him, even after we have sinned. Jesus took Peter back, after he denied thrice that he even knew the Lord. Jesus simply said, “Feed my sheep,” (John21:15-17) and nothing like, “You are worthless. I don’t forgive you.” Instead Jesus forgave all his disciples over and over. He wanted to be close to them and also close to us today. Jesus wants to hear from us, even when we are upset, scared, angry, confused or even doubting. Jesus did not yell at loyal Thomas who said he would not believe until he put his hands in Jesus’ wounds. Instead Jesus called him to come close and feel those healed scars on his body (John20:27.) This is how Jesus calls us today.
We get to do things for Jesus. Whether we are ministering to orphans and widows or teaching others about Jesus or doing any other service, we get to do this. We don’t “Have” to do it. We do these things out of our love. And if we catch ourselves serving out a sense of obligation, we must stop ourselves. We might even need to step down from a ministry if we hate it or regret it. We need to delight ourselves in the Lord, because he will truly give us the delights of our hearts when they align with his will (Psalm 37:4.)
The fact that Jesus listens to us and desires to share his plans with us might overwhelm anyone who grew up in the home where parents did not want to hear from their children. We really do need to be aware of how our parents treated us so we never mistake God’s heart for theirs, especially if they were judgmental, distant, critical or in any other way too hard on us. This mutual relationship with God is unique. No other religion offers this relationship, where God serves us and tells us his plans. For example, look at what Jesus said in John 15:15, “No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.” This gives us peace so much that in John 14:27 Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.”
In no other religion does God want to hear from us. We really need to savor this reality. We get to tell him we are angry or hurt, but we also NEED to tell him. The more we talk to God, the more natural that conversation becomes. This fact may sound too simple, but it is true. We build a stronger and stronger relationship with God simply by listening to his voice via the Holy Spirit and our Bible and by talking to him all day long. 1Thes.5:17 says, “Pray without ceasing.” To pray without ceasing does not require fancy prayers or hiding how we feel. It might be saying, “God I have no idea how to handle this angry teenager and I need your help right now,” or “I am so lonely and I feel like no one will listen; please hear me as I cry to you.” We might be furious with someone and say, “God I am so mad that I want to hurt that person. But that is bad, and I truly want to please you, so please don’t let me say or do anything mean right now.”
What if we are furious with God and feel like he let us down and disappointed us so our dreams were dashed; perhaps our beloved one died? We can even scream our anger at God, “You crushed my dreams. I am so mad at you.” God can handle our very ugly words and ugly prayers. We don’t go to God so we can impress him. We go to him so he can comfort us and at times he might even calm us when we are so furious, that we know we are either sinning or about to sin. God can handle hearing that we want to hurt someone or we want to over-eat or gamble or drink too much liquor do anything else we know we should not do. He can handle hearing us tell him these things. Crazy though it sounds, this is a step towards abiding in him. If we can tell God all these mean, sinful and nasty things, yet he still loves us, we begin to trust him more.
If we can believe he saw us when we misbehaved as a youth and even now do bad things, yet he keeps wanting us to come to him and talk to him, he must really love us and want us. He must really want to forgive us. We should not “Clean up our image of God,” but instead admit we ourselves are unclean. And God can handle seeing all of our ugliness. He wants to see it, because only he, via the Holy Spirit, can help us to clean it up. When we know we can be as raw and ugly as we truly are, then we know we can slow down and let him help us clean up our anger, or fear, or doubt or other strong emotion. We trust him, and this also opens the door for us to rest in him.
Wow, what a kind God who wants us, even when we are wretched. This is the God we can abide in. This is the God who is so trustworthy that we want to rest in him. There is so much safety and joy in resting in this God. He is not the aloof parent who does not want to hear from us. He is not the snobby God who will not tell us his dreams and plans. He reveals them to us in the Bible. He wants a mutual relationship with us. When we realize we can fully trust God, then we find such peace in resting in him.
Contrast this with the bad feeling of a chair that wobbles and breaks and we cannot rest in it, with God, whom we can always trust. God is better than the most trust worthy chair where we sink in after a hard day and just rest. He is always safe and better than our most trustworthy chair or comfy bed. He really did not crush us the way we thought he did. But if we can cry out that we think he did crush us and destroy us, then we can find calm and realize God still has good plans for us.
Look at the prophets who falsely accused God of letting them down. In Jer.20:7 Jeremiah said, “Lord, you tricked me, and I was tricked. You overpowered me and won. People make fun of me all day long. Everyone laughs at me.” In Hab.1:2, Habakuk said, “How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save?” In Jonah 4:1-3, it says, “But it greatly displeased Jonah and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, ‘Please Lord, was not this what I said while I was still in my own country? Therefore in order to forestall this I fled to Tarshish, for I knew that You are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abundant in loving kindness, and one who relents concerning calamity. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for death is better to me than life.’” The entire congregation of Israelites complained in Exodus 17:3, “But the people thirsted there for water; and they grumbled against Moses and said, ‘Why, now, have you brought us up from Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?’” The writer of Psalm 55:2 said, “Give heed to me and answer me; I am restless in my complaint and am surely distracted.” The writer of Psalm 102:1 said, “A Prayer of the Afflicted when he is faint and pours out his complaint before the Lord. Hear my prayer, O Lord! And let my cry for help come to You.”
God kept coming back to them, answering them, and redirecting them when they were wrong. But he never turned his back and stopped listening to him. It is the man or woman who stops talking to God who loses contact with God. God is a gentleman and he will not force his conversation on people who won’t talk to him or listen to him. The people who cannot abide or rest in the Lord include those who won’t open up to him in raw honesty and those who won’t listen to him.
So please know that as long as you keep coming to God, he will keep listening to you. He is God and more than capable of helping you to sort out your anger, fear, doubt and more. As a result he is also more than willing to let you rest in him. What a calming influence he has on us. Like a mom who soothes her raging toddler, God calms us when we tell him everything.
I want to write more next week about the joy I have experienced by abiding in the Lord. God impressed the urgency of writing about this lie that keeps us from resting in God. Please join me next week when I finish this series on abiding in the Lord. I want to share with you the awesome joy and peace I’ve found while going through hardships. Abiding in the Lord is not only possible, but so worth the effort to get to that place of rest.
Thank you for joining us in this post. I pray I’ve blessed you with God’s shalom and Agape, and if you think of anyone (man or woman, young or old) who will be encouraged by this post, please share it. I want to invite everyone to join us in this joyful journey of Christian faith with peace.