REST : a Friday afternoon inspiration

Each letter of the word REST is also the first letter of 4 other words – an acrostic.

The inspiration for this was on a busy Friday afternoon, when I worked in a hectic PR office.

I was stressed out. Not just on that Friday, but I had been stressed out for a while.

At that time in my life people had been telling me to ‘REST in the Lord”. Which is Christianese for ‘chill out and trust God’. But I didn’t get it.

I had searched the Bible for the word REST and seen how in the pre-Jesus part of the Bible, Moses, who’d had more than his fair share of stress, had entered God’s rest. And this didn’t mean that he’d died, it was a state that he had been living in while trekking around with thousands of grumbling people in the dessert.

Then there was a whole bit in the New Testament, the Jesus part of the Bible, about not missing out on entering God’s rest.

Anyway that Friday afternoon, I was busy trying to finish work for the weekend, but I needed to take a toilet break, which is very inconvenient when you are busy.

However…eureka…the little room, away from the computer and the phone, was a place of quiet revelation. (I’ll add here that my visit was no longer than a brief pause, no time for reading!)

Anyway I’d got it.

REST was all about Relying on God.

Not a bit, not some of the time, but Entirely.

It should not be striving, but a complete Stop from self-reliance and constant Trying.

YAY – REST!

Then eureka part 2 came this summer, and I hasten to add I was not in the bathroom at the time!

I was reading and learned that the Hebrew word Shabbat, from which we get the word Sabbath actually means to CEASE or STOP.

In the beginning Genesis story in the Bible, it says that after creating everything God rested: he stopped working and ceased from labouring.

In the Moses story a bit later in that same Bible book, God sets up Shabbat, a rest for people….the weekend!

But RESTing in God goes beyond having a day off each week. It’s a state of constancy.

It’s not about kicking back and doing nothing, rather it’s about doing everything from a place of relationship with God the creator, so that you Rely Entirely on Him and Stop Trying to make everything alright on your own.