RESTING IN CHRIST
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28 NKJV
For a New Testament believer, rest is the cessation of all activities or awareness of need to perform activities because they understand that in Christ everything was finished.
What does this look like, you may ask? For example, we do not pray for God to answer prayer—we are persuaded that He already hears and responds according to His will. So we pray from that persuasion. We deviate from His will when we forget that He has made His dwelling in us. As we abide, His will is formed in us, and we find that obedience flows more naturally than striving. There is less and less margin for error when a man is so bound to Christ that his natural impulses begin to emulate divine thought.
Your enemy, the devil, is cunning—he does not waste time tempting you where you are strong, but instead presses into the cracks of your weakness. So, a person with people-pleasing tendencies may carry the same into their walk with God—trying to earn His affection rather than receiving His love freely. A person given to anxiety may live under a heavy weight of guilt when they stumble, forgetting that grace covers them. Yet the rest Christ promises is not freedom from responsibility, but freedom within responsibility: freedom to walk, to serve, to repent, to rise again without condemnation.
To rest in Christ is to remember that every demand of the law was already fulfilled in Him. It is to know that we are not servants working for approval, but children walking in inheritance. Rest is the fruit of faith—faith that Jesus is enough.
Prayer: My Father, I thank You that in You, my soul finds rest. I trust that Your work on the cross was truly finished. Where anxiety tempts me to perform, remind me of Your grace. Where guilt weighs me down, lift me with Your love. May my life reflect the peace of one who abides in You daily, in Jesus name. Amen!
CI.
RELATED RESOURCES
• Hebrews 4:9
• Philippians 4:6
• Isaiah 26:3
