Resting in God

THE CARE OF A FATHER

In the Christian Bible there are many references and even commands to “rest in God”. In Exodus 33:14, God promises his people that “My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest”. Psalm 62 says “Truly my soul finds rest in God; my salvation comes from him”. Isaiah, in chapter 40, says “They who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength… they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint”. Jesus promises in Matthew 11, “Come to me all who are weary and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you… and you will find rest for your souls”. The author of Hebrews 4 says, “There will come a sabbath rest for the people of God, whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his”.

What are we to make of all this? What does it actually mean to rest in God? Do we need to rest in God? Well, rest in God is unlike other forms of rest. It's not like resting in sleep or Netflix or in good food or even in the love of your partner. Resting in God is fundamentally unique and is a product of trust. You see, the major claim of the Christian bible is that for all that want it, God has adopted them as his children and now he is their father. Resting in God is like resting in the love of a father. A young child does not worry about whether they will eat or drink or what clothes they will wear tomorrow or if they're going to be safe whilst playing at the park because their parents are with them. This is exactly the way that Jesus teaches his followers to think.

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Isn't life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

- Matthew 6:25-33

DO NOT WORRY ABOUT… ANYTHING?

This is a hefty command. Jesus is telling his followers they don't need to be worried about anything. Not food, not clothes, not finances, not conflict, because “your heavenly Father knows ALL your needs”. This is kind of absurd when you think about it. Who can live their life like this? Who actually doesn't worry about how they are going to pay rent? Who actually doesn't worry about relationships when there is conflict? Who actually doesn't worry about groceries when finances are tight? Surely this is an idealistic command, because as long as there is scarcity in the world, we will be worried about meeting our needs. Right?

Well, Jesus’s teaching here is not idealistic, it is how he actually expects his followers to live, and who wouldn't want to live this way? But how could we? How can someone truly face scarcity, living in the real world with real problems and not be racked with worry and anxiety? Well, Jesus’s security and the security he offers his disciples seems to be based around the provision of the father: “Your heavenly father feeds them (birds), are you not much more valuable than them?”, “If God clothes the grass… will he not much more clothe you?”, “[People who don’t follow me] worry about these things, but your heavenly father knows all your needs”. Jesus truly and firmly believes that God is taking care of him and his followers.

The entire story of the bible can be summed up in the phrase “Trust God”. Jesus and his followers are able to rest from all their fear because they trust God. What does it mean to trust God? It means that you truly believe that God loves you and is in control of everything. Paul, the author of the book of Romans says in chapter 8, “we know that, for those who love God, all things work together for good”.  This is a really bold claim. Paul believes that God is not only in control of all things, but directing all things for his personal good. Now if you know anything about Paul, this may seem like a strange thing for him to say. He faced multiple imprisonments for preaching the gospel, countless beatings, several near death experiences, including getting flogged by the Jewish leaders of his time. He was stoned by a crowd and left for dead, he was in three shipwrecks, one of which left him adrift at sea for 36 hours, and he was constantly betrayed by his brothers and pursued by the state for his message. How on earth can a man who has lived through all this say that God is working all things together for his good? I believe that we can move toward understanding Paul by looking to Jesus’s teaching at the sermon on the mount.

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.”

- Matthew 5:29,30

SEEING AND TAKING

You may be wondering, what does this passage have to do with Paul’s seemingly delusional belief that God is working everything together for his good? Well this teaching from Jesus is a reference to Genesis chapter 3, when Adam and Eve committed the first sin by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve were commanded not to eat from this tree because it would harm them, but Genesis 3:6 says “When she saw that the tree was good… she took of its fruit”. This action occurs in many other places in scripture: Gen 12:14-15, Genesis 34:2, Joshua 7:21, 2 Samuel 11:2-4. Whenever this language of “seeing and taking” is used, it is indicative of sin. Why is this?

The essence of sin is not trusting God. When Adam and Eve “See and Take” the fruit, when Achan “Sees and Takes” the forbidden treasure, when David “Sees and Takes” Bathsheba, they are judging with their eyes and taking with their hands. It is this double-step, judging with your eyes and taking with your hands, that Jesus is preaching against in Matthew 5. Adam and Eve were God's children, designed to be with him and tasked to rule over creation (Gen 1:28-30). The problem with this is that our judgment will always be faulty because we have limited understanding and our attempts to execute our will will always be flawed because we have limited power. Humans were not designed to see and take, but to trust their father to provide. God gave them a choice to either learn from him, as a child learns from their father, or try to discern good and bad on their own, to judge what seems good and execute their own will. God warned them that the latter choice would lead to death because God is the source of all life and truth, and so to pursue life and truth apart from him is an oxymoron. Adam and Eve did not trust God, they judged that the tree was fine and took from it.

You see, just like Adam and Eve, every character in the bible had a choice, and we all have a choice: We can either trust that God loves us and come to him for provision as a child comes to their father, or we can judge for ourselves what we think is good and try to get it on our own. The entire story of the Hebrew bible is a testament of what happens when people “see and take”, when we judge for ourselves what is good and take it. The result is always disastrous. Not only are we humans notoriously bad at discerning what is truly good for us, more often than not, we are unable to get the “good” things we want.

OUR INABILITY

We like to think that we are good at discerning good from bad and that we are pretty capable of achieving good for ourselves. Like a person at a crossroads in the woods, we don’t know where we’re going. The trail to the left looks nice, and the trail to the right looks dangerous, but we are working with limited information. We don’t know where the paths lead. Our best judgement is limited by what we know. It is impossible for us to definitively say whether one way is good and another bad. So, our eyes are faulty and our reach is inadequate. But God doesn’t tell us to get better at picking the right path. Instead, he invites us to trust that regardless of what the path looks like, he is taking care of us. He invites us to live the way we were designed to: as dependent children. All throughout the old testament, God is pursuing us, seeking to provide for us if only we will receive it. Jesus came to be the ultimate expression of God’s provision and love for us. 

Jesus invites us to approach God as a child approaches their father, with an expectation of loving provision. We can give up our constant assessment of what is good and what we need and instead trust that our father knows best, even when it doesn't feel like it. How many times does a parent have to do something that their kids don't like for their own good? Flu shots, vegetables, nap time, chores, the list goes on. God is our father and we are not always going to understand why he does what he does, but Jesus promises that it is all good. God loves his children and his children get to live with the peace of knowing this is true. This is why Jesus can confidently say “gouge out your eye… and cut off your hand”, give up your desire, your compulsion, to judge right from wrong on your own, because you can't. Instead, come to your father “who knows all your needs” and receive from him. For anyone that believes in Jesus and trusts his promises, they will become children of God.

TRUE REST: THE LOVE OF GOD

Paul had this peace. Even in the face of unbelievable suffering, he believed that God loved him and that all his suffering was for good. Paul recognized that he could not possibly understand whether something would turn out for good or bad, he recognized that, even if he could discern what is good, he could not ensure that he gets it. He realized that his only hope for getting goodness is that God wants to give it to him. Jesus came to prove God’s love for us. God himself came to live with us because he loved us, he came to suffer with us because he loved us, he died for us because he loved us and he was resurrected, beating death, opening up the doorway into eternal life. Now anyone that accepts his invitation and follows him can be in relationship with God. This is all God has ever wanted, for his children to come home to be with him. In order to make this happen, God himself came to us to rescue us from our lonely lives of sin and suffering, to rescue us to everlasting life and joy. Jesus is the undying proof of God’s love for us and the more we look to him, the more we will learn to trust again.

The rest of God is knowing that God loves you and is taking care of you, believing that he is good even when the path looks dark and you don't understand where he is leading. Even when things hurt, we get to rest in the fact that God is more powerful than our suffering and has promised to use it for good. Like children, we get to rest in the care of our father. Jesus has invited everyone to be a child of God. All you have to do is believe that the invitation is genuine and follow the messenger back to the party. If you reject the invitation, God will not force you to be his child. But he wants you to come.

I don't want to undersell the difficulty of this. Many of us have experienced overwhelming suffering and it is often hard to imagine a loving God being in control of the world that we live in. But if this is you, then I have a very simple challenge for you: ask God to prove his love to you. Bring your frustration and pain and anger to him. He can handle it and he wants to show you how much he loves you, if only you will turn your head toward him. This is what faith is: “Whoever comes to God must first believe that he is real and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him” - Hebrews 11:6