Rest for the weary

As we enter into the second week of the new year, I’m more awake to the great variations within myself and those around me. Specifically the variations between being full of ‘vim and vigor’ versus weariness and heaviness. The high of a new year, a fresh start; but the low of the disappointed expectations of the previous year, the exhaustion of holiday season, and the slowness of seeing results from the new year’s resolutions.

These variations can be within one day, one hour; and if left unchecked, can be quite disastrous. It gives me a sense of empathy for those diagnosed with bipolar disorder, which seems to be the trending diagnosis, and then I immediately I hear my psychology professor in college repeatedly tell us as students reading and studying the DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders), ‘DO NOT diagnose yourself!’ This is most helpful in my seeking to identify myself as a woman in Christ, and not being conformed to the world.

How do we who are in Christ ‘check ourselves’ so that we are not being tossed to and fro with every wind and wave of emotion and thought? What is the Christian’s DSM or DPPM (diagnostic, prognostic, and prescriptive manual of spiritual disorders)? How do we learn to use it properly? Who is our professor training and preparing us to present our bodies as living sacrifices, to walk in a manner worthy of this high calling? (Romans 12:1; Ephesians 4:1)

“Come to Me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) Jesus is the Word. Come to the Word. The Word diagnoses us: weariness is a result of sin. The Word gives the prognosis: if sin remains, it leads to death; if sin is removed, it leads to life. (Romans 6:23) The Word gives the prescription: repent and believe. (Mark 1:15) Jesus removes the yoke of slavery to sin from us, freeing us to turn away from sin, and turn to Him.

Hebrews 4:12, “For the Word of God is living and active…discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.”

II Timothy 3:16-17, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.”

“Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matthew 11:29) As a woman in Christ, I will find rest for my soul in submitting to Jesus by accepting the yoke of slavery to righteousness, and by learning from His example of perfect submission to the Father.

“For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” (Matthew 11:30) Being yoked to Jesus, united to Jesus, is easy because He has already accomplished the hard work, plowed the path by living a sinless life in full obedience to the Father. He has already faced and conquered all the temptations we will face, without sin, setting us the example of how to endure or escape such temptations. (Hebrews 4:15; I Corinthians 10:13) And His burden is light because He has already taken on the weight of my sin, the untold heaviness of the wrath of the Father.

This rest, this ease and lightness is not what the world thinks of as rest. It is not laying around, doing nothing, being lazy and slothful. It is ‘active rest’, as the fitness industry likes to say.

God created man to work, but the Fall made that work laborious, heavy, and hard. (Genesis 1:26-29; 3:17-19) This rest, ease, and lightness is the reversing of the curse of the Fall. In Christ, yoked to Jesus, the work is once again a joy, a pleasure, a delight because the heavy and difficult weight of sin has been removed. In Him, we have the strength, the power, the life to do what He has called us to do.

In Christ we have been freed from the weight of sin to truly live as God originally created mankind to live. We are no longer weighed down and hindered, being held back from being who we are – prophets, priests, and kings.

- Soli Deo gloria