The Prayer of Rest
Matthew 11:25-30
The story is told of a lady who became very angry at the pastor. When she finally caught up with him, she said, "I called you all morning at the church and dropped by to see you in the afternoon on Tuesday and you were not there." The minister said, "I’m sorry Madam, but Tuesday is my day off." "Your day off", she said very self righteously. "I’ll have you know that the devil never takes a day off". The pastor said, "you are absolutely right, and I’m sure that if I did the same thing, I would become just like him."
We do live in the rat race don’t we, where the motto of life is ‘go for it’. We have fast food, quick print shops, faster and faster computers, express oil changes, One hour photos, instant cocoa, instant coffee, even instant tea (yuk), microwaves, overnight delivery, express mail, instant messenger, drive thru restaurants, drive thru chemists, mobile phones so that we can to talk to someone right now. We eat fast food and then want fast diet plans. We see our society moving at a 100 miles an hour and we think it’s good for us!
“Busy” is the hallmark of our times. I’ve lost count of how many times I ask people, “How are you doing?” and the answer comes back – ‘Oh, I’m just soooooo Busy”. ‘I haven’t got a moment to myself’. It’s almost like our busyness has become a ‘badge of honour’ – a medal for us to wear. And I’m just as bad! I spend my week frantically darting from one thing to another. You know, many days I will start at 9am in the morning, stop for lunch, stop for tea, out in the evening for a meeting, or a home group, or a youth club, and get back into the house at 1030 at night. And I go to bed to get ready to do it all again the next day! Many of us go through life – chasing our own tails. Often I will say to people, ‘if I go any faster I’ll meet myself coming back in the opposite direction’. And I’m not the only one.
What’s that ditti? ‘Mary had a little lamb, was given her to keep, but then it joined a baptist church and died from lack of sleep’. I’ve said before, my epitaph will read ‘He’s gone to another meeting’.
And I know that it’s not just me. Most of us live our lives in that way. Why do we do it? Why do we fill our days with so much activity, and so much busyness? Everyone is busy! Too many people, places and things are grabbing for our attention. Too many people, places and things are vying for our involvement. Too many people, places and things are vying for our support. This board, this committee, this project, this meeting, this event, this appointment. You know, sadly, all too often the Church just adds to life’s hecticness. “Here a program, there a program, everywhere a program, program.” Someone once said, “The problem with living life in the fast lane is that you get to the toll booth quicker!”
There was a newspaper story about a basset hound called Tattoo. It said that Tattoo hadn’t intended to go for a run that evening, but when his owner accidentally shut his lead in the car door and took off for a drive, Tattoo had no choice. The report said that a motorcycle policeman noticed a passing vehicle with something that appeared to be dragging behind it. As he passed the vehicle, he saw Tattoo. The policeman managed to get the car to stop, and Tattoo was rescued -- but not before the dog reached a speed of twenty-five miles per hour and rolled over several time. Now, for many life feels just like that. The pace of life is so fast and relentless. Sometimes you’re on your feet running as fast as you can go. More often than not you feel like you’re situations and your circumstances are dragging you around by the neck.
Busyness – it’s a curse of western society, it’s a curse of the 21st century. Many people think that:
1: Busy equals important. - We think that if we’re really busy it means that we’re really living life to the full. But in reality being busy cuts us off from the time we need to spend cultivating the important relationships in our life: with our spouse, our kids, our friends, our God.
Many people think that:
2: Someone wins the rat race. But it’s a lie because the rat race is all about "what you do" and God is more interested in "who you are." God will not ask at the judgment, "How busy were you?" What he will ask is, "Are you like Jesus?"
Many people think that:
3: Hurrying will buy you more time. But you know that all this technology we now have was supposed to create tons of free time. When I was in school back in the 70’s the expectation was that the technological revolution would mean that we would only be working 3 day weeks and we would have much greater leisure time. But in fact it has just increased the pace at which we have to work.
- hurrying will only buy more heart attacks, ulcers, stress, and headaches; but it won’t buy more time.
Many people think that:
4: "Down time" is wasted. We are made to feel guilty if we aren’t constantly "doing something."
- but you know God instituted the Sabbath into creation for a reason and the whole of Scripture is filled with the idea of "God’s rest."
For many of us we are just too busy. We live in a world that is 24/7, and we are far busier than God ever intended us to be – and, if we are honest, we are far too busy to pray – real prayer, meaningful prayer! Quality time spent in the presence of Jesus. Far more often than it should, the busyness of our daily demands crowd out our time with God. C.S. Lewis wrote, “The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists of shoving it all back, in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.” When we allow the busyness of our lives to crowd in, our prayers, if we pray, become just vending machine prayers. We quickly put in our 50 pence pieces and punch in the numbers for what we want. A1-forgiveness, or D3-a good day. And all too often we approach God from the throne of race, rather than meeting Him at the throne of grace. And we wonder why we end up exhausted, depressed, and burnt out.
But Jesus said, ‘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.’
Rest. It’s a word we hear often enough, but do we really understand just how important it is? When I read the Gospels I can’t get over how relaxed and calm Jesus kept from day to day. You never once see Jesus in a hurry. Even when one of Jesus’ closest friends, Lazarus, was on his deathbed, Jesus took His time getting to Bethany to be with Lazarus. How is it that Jesus moved through life so slowly and yet accomplished so much? Is there something we 21st Century Christians have missed?
Rest is not only vital to our spiritual lives, it is imperative if we are to be effective. Jesus understood that and he made it a point to get away in order to rest and rejuvenate. Sometimes the best way to cope with the busyness of life is to get away from it for a little while. Luke 5:16 says that Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray. We are told that Jesus would get up and pray long before the day began. We are told that in the middle of the business of the day, as the crowds were pushing at him, and demanding from him. In the middle of miracles, and healings, and teaching, Jesus would withdraw to a lonely place, and pray. It was his way of finding rest, it was his way of “recharging” His spiritual, physical and emotional batteries. And we need to learn to follow his example. We are a people too busy for our own good, too busy to stop and realize that in our frantic business we are actually accomplishing less and aging more.
According to a Greek legend, in ancient Athens a man noticed the great storyteller Aesop playing childish games with some little boys. He laughed and jeered at Aesop, asking him why he wasted his time in such frivolous activity.
Aesop responded by picking up a bow, loosening its string, and placing it on the ground. Then he said to the critical Athenian, “Now, answer the riddle, if you can. Tell us what the unstrung bows implies.” The man looked at it for several moments but had no idea what point Aesop was trying to make. Aesop explained, “If you keep a bow always bent, it will break eventually; but if you let it go slack, it will be more fit for use when you want it.”
People are like that too. Often, far more often than we do, we need to let ourselves go slack before the Lord. And allow God to minister to us his peace and his rest. In the Old Testament, God set a pattern for us when He “rested from all His work” (Gen. 2:3). Not only did Jesus set an example of rest for us, but God the Father did as well. ‘So the creation of the heavens and the earth and everything in them was completed. On the seventh day, having finished his task, God rested from all his work. And God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, because it was the day when he rested from his work of creation’. Genesis 2:1-3. Shouldn’t we take His example seriously? Shouldn’t we be following the example of Jesus? Setting aside a special time to relax physically and renew yourself emotionally and spiritually. You will be at your best for God if you have taken time to loosen the bow. And you do that by entering the prayer of rest.
Now I said last week that often when we talk about prayer we get stuck into the same old rut of adoration, confession, thanksgiving – prayers that are full of words directed at God. But prayer is much bigger than that. Prayer is much bigger than just constantly repeated, empty, meaningless words, uttered toward God. Prayer is a heartfelt cry toward God, a cry that comes from our inner being that reaches out and touches God and moves Him to action. Last week we looked at a ‘wordless’ prayer – the prayer of tears – and this week we’re looking at another ‘wordless’ prayer – the prayer of rest.
Jesus said, ‘Come to me’ – How do we come to him? By prayer – and when we do - what is his promise? ‘and I will give you rest’. The prayer of rest.
I tried to get hold of a picture of what it is like inside the eye of a storm. You know, inside they eye of a hurricane they say that there is perfect calm – even though there is chaos going on all around – inside the actual eye of the storm there is perfect peace, and stillness. But unfortunately I couldn’t find one, so I’ve shown this picture before, of a man stood at the door of his lighthouse in perfect tranquility while a storm rages all around him. It depicts pretty much the same message that I am trying to portray.
And that is, that through the prayer of rest, God places his children in the eye of the storm. When all around us is chaos and confusion, deep within we know stability and serenity. In the midst of the intense busyness of life, in the midst of the struggle and the toil – we are still and we are relaxed and we are refreshed. That is the fruit of the Prayer of Rest.
Picture the day that Jesus went to the house of Mary and Martha. We are told that Martha busy’s herself in the kitchen – there’s food to prepare, the pots and pans to wash. Even though Jesus Christ is in her midst, she’s caught up in the chaos of the moment – no time to stop, no time to relax, no time to rest. But Mary, despite the busyness, despite the chaos, despite what needs to be done – she chooses to come and sit at the masters feet – to rest in his presence and listen to the his voice – and Jesus says that Mary has chosen what is better. The prayer of rest.
But if only it was that easy eh! If only we could slip out of our busy schedules, away from the strain and anxiety and hurry! If only we could know that steady peace of God where all the strain is gone and Jesus is already the victor! If only…
But we can, we really can. We can know the reality of this rest in our everyday, busy, frantic, lives.
Henri Nouwen writes about prayer in his book The Way of the Heart. And he says that the early church fathers wrote that we should "pray always." And he says that the literal translation of these words is "come to rest." What a wonderful picture – that as we come to pray, we’re actually coming to rest. And he goes on to say, "that the rest we find in prayer has nothing to do with the absence of conflict or pain. It is a rest in God in the midst of a very intense daily struggle."
The problems are still there, the challenges are still there, the busyness is still there, there’s meeting to attend, there’s people to see, there’s work to do – but in the eye of your storm – amongst all the activity and chaos - there is perfect peace and tranquility and rest.
Through the prayer of rest we enter into a place of intense stillness, a place of solitude, a place of quiet alertness. But how? How do we enter this Prayer of Rest? How do we come before God in the midst of our struggle and toil, in the midst of all the noise and commotion that fills our day? Warren Wiersbe once said, “The ability to calm your soul and wait before God is one of the most difficult things in the Christian life. Our old nature is restless...the world around us is frantically in a hurry. But a restless heart usually leads to a reckless life.” So how do we come before God and resist filling the air with our empty, meaningless words?
Anthony Bloom tells the story of an elderly lady who had been working at prayer with all her might but without ever sensing God’s presence. Wisely, the archbishop encouraged the old woman to go to her room each day and ‘for fifteen minutes knit before the face of God, but I forbid you to say one word of prayer. You just knit and try to enjoy the peace of your room’.
The woman’s first thought was ‘oh, how nice. I’ve got fifteen minutes during which I can do nothing without feeling guilty’. In time, however, she began to enter the silence created by her knitting. Soon, she said, ‘I perceived that this silence was not simply an absence of noise, but that the silence had substance. It was not the absence of something – but the presence of something’. As she continued her daily knitting, she discovered that ‘at the heart of the silence there was he who is all stillness, all peace, all poise’. She had let go of her tight-fisted efforts to enter God’s presence and, by doing so, discovered God’s presence already there.
Be Still
The psalmist puts it this way – he simply says ‘Be still and know that I am God’. The meaning behind the Hebrew words that we translate as ‘Be Still’ literally mean ‘shut up’. It means coming before God, away from the noise, away from the commotion, away from the busyness. Not with a shopping list, not with a list of demands, but actually with no words at all – just with a heart that is open to listen.
And in the quietness, in the stillness, in the tranquillity – the voice of God whispers. Elijah met with God at Horeb, the mountain of God. It says that there was a great and powerful wind that tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper – and in the whisper God spoke. And Elijah became refreshed, and renewed, and re-invigorated to meet the challenges that came his way.
In the silence – the voice of God whispers and we become refreshed. ‘Be still (shut up) and know that I am God’. In Psalm 131 he says, ‘"I have stilled my soul, hushed it like a weaned child. Like a weaned child on its mother’s lap, so is my soul within me’.
Our hearts are restless until they rest in Jesus. They are whip lashed from one direction to another by the many voices we listen to, and as a result never find true peace. But here’s a secret... the best kept secret in the world. That few people know, even Christians. Your healing, and your restoration, and your rest, is in the quiet silence in the Master’s presence. Your abundance, your every need is at the feet of Jesus!
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.’
I pray that each one of us will learn to enter this prayer of rest. This time spent in his presence and at his feet – wordless prayers – just soaking up his love, his peace, listening to his voice, spending time with him, in the eye of the storm – that he might equip us, and strengthen us, and renew us to do his will.
