Learn How to Rest

Something that I have learned over these many years is the importance of rest.  We talk about an increase in money, time, talent, and treasure, but you also need to know how to have an increase of doing everything from a position of rest.  It is so significant.  I really believe God’s best is a people at rest; not always trying to achieve but simply coming to a place where, according to the Word of God, all your cares are cast on Him because He cares for you.

I find it very relaxing to me that I can get a good hot cup of coffee, sit on my wonderful couch with my 2 little doggies sitting next to me, and the next thing I know revelation and inspiration comes.  I begin to restore myself by resting.  Resting is a decision.  You have to create your own atmosphere that will be conducive for rest and will allow you to hear your own heartbeat.

I want to encourage you with some of the ways I have found that I can rest:

1) Get away from all the other voices that are talking when nobody’s there but you; the voices that keep reminding you to do this, and  do that, or you didn’t do this, and you didn’t do that.  Make those voices be silent by setting your affections on things that are above and not beneath.  Just simply say with your mouth, “This time is a time of rest.  I am not just resting my physical body, but my body, soul, and spirit. My triune being has just come to sit, recuperate, and restore.  I found that restoration is not just the repair of something, but to restore is to make it better than it was originally.

2)  I believe that if you do everything from a position of rest, before you start a work, get a word.  The way you get those words is by following the Scripture which says, “My sheep know My voice and the voice of another they’ll not hear.”  If you are hearing a multiplicity of do this, do that, go here, and go there, or you didn’t do this or that, back yourself up, get a cup of tea or coffee, and create an atmosphere that is conducive for you to hear that one inner voice.

One of my favorite writers was Kenneth Hagin.  In an article, I recently read he said, ‘I was praising the Lord and I knew it was time for me to enter a season of rest.’  So, he went into the church and started out on his knees just praising God.  Then he got tired, so he laid down on his back and began to rest.  The next thing he knew he had gone to sleep in the presence of God.  As he rested, this thought came to him:  in Mark 11:23, three times it says “say,” and one time it says “pray.”  He had never thought about that.  In his time of rest, he had gotten an insight into the heart of God that changed his whole life.  Not only did it change his life, but it changed the lives of so many thousands and thousands of people that he told this story to.  He said, ‘You don’t pray to the mountain, you say to the mountain of circumstances and situations.  Tell it to be removed and cast into the sea.’  In his position of rest, when he calmed himself down and created that space where he could hear his inner man, he could hear the voice of God.

You cannot do that if you are listening to all the extraneous other sounds.  This is the day of rest for me, and I pray that it will be a day of rest for you.