Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy-laden and overburdened, and I will cause you to rest. [I will ease and relieve and refresh your souls.]
Matthew 11:28 AMPC
If you have ever stood under a powerful waterfall, the water—though it pummeled your body—offered a sense of fresh renewal. Jesus said if you come to Him, He will refresh your soul. He offers spiritual rest. Unlike physical rest, one definition of spiritual rest is “to cease from striving.”
Spiritual rest offers a place of sweet surrender. In his book The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, seventeenth-century English Puritan church leader, poet, hymn writer, and theologian Richard Baxter said, “They who seek this rest [to cease from striving] have an inward principle of spiritual life. God does not move men like stones, but He endows them with life, not to enable them to move without him, but in subordination to himself, the first mover.”
Jesus is calling you to a higher place of rest. As you move in Him and with Him, you can let go of those things you are trying to control and can experience His sweet, easy rest.
Jesus, I want to experience the spiritual rest You have for me. I let go of my control and submit to Your direction. I stand under the waterfall of Your spiritual rest and will not move except to do so in step with You.
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Today’s reading was adapted from Daily Wisdom for Women: 2018 Devotional Collection with permission from Barbour Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. Reading was written by Shanna D. Gregor.