You will find rest ...

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Matthew 11:28-30

This passage has been quoted, spoken on, taught, and meditated on so many times and in so many ways over the years. The question I want us to focus on right now is; have we taken it to heart yet? We read the bible stories and we see characters that we want to be like. We want to be like David, like Moses, like Elijah, like Daniel, like Peter, and more importantly, like Jesus. We read the “Sermon on the Mount” and we try to follow those wise words, and we get to this passage in Matthew 11 and we long for that rest. I have been weary and burdened more times than I can count. I know that you feel the same, especially you house parents out there. You feel the drag of the day. You feel that weary feeling every time you are asked the same question for the 50th time by every boy in your care. So the offer of rest is so appealing and we want to jump at it.

Over the past two months as we have taken part in some of these spiritual disciplines, I have read through some of your journals and seen where your thoughts have gone. I have seen how some of you have such a hard time quieting down your life and one of you were even honest with me and said that calming our thoughts and hearts down in this devotional time felt so pointless. So what is the point? Why are we doing this? The answer to that lies in the yoke. We want to follow Jesus and follow his commandments, but disciplining ourselves to actually sit still and meditate on scripture and silence and prayer time seems so hard. Dallas Willard in The Spirit of Disciplines, had this to say about this difficult way of living: “The secret of the easy yoke is simple, actually. It is the intelligent, informed, unyielding resolve to live as Jesus lived in all aspects of his life, not just in the moment of specific choice or action.”

If you have taken these disciplines to heart so far, I applaud you and I plead with you to begin sharing your thoughts and your feelings with someone. Find that opportunity. Jesus longs for you to learn how to walk as he did, pray as he did, sit and be as he did, worship as he did, serve as he did, and do so many other things that he did. It is in these set aside times with God that we learn these things. We learn by practicing. As we come to the last couple of weeks of this disciplines study, I am going to be hitting on a few other disciplines through our daily devotionals. I hope that you already have the yoke around your neck and you are allowing Jesus to guide you. Let him help you find that rest. I am looking forward to continuing the journey with you myself.

Your brother on this search for rest,

Jason