I have a talent I would like to share with you.
I am a hypocrite. I don’t like to toot my own horn, but to everyone reading this, you must know that I am super good at it.
Recently my daily devotions, and life in general, have pointed to rest. If you have read one of my previous posts about taking time to rest you will know it has been heavy on my mind already. Immediately after writing the “And Then There was Rest” post my family got incredibly busy. I find myself today needing some of my own advice. It got me thinking about ways in which I do the exact opposite of what God asks. Time and time again in the bible God tells us not to worry…don’t be afraid…yet do we ever default to not worrying and not fearing? I read an article saying fear and what it should or shouldn’t look like is addressed in one way or another well over 500 times in the bible. Maybe in some things, and with age, it gets easier to hold back the knee jerk, or maybe it’s just that we learn to have a slower reaction time? Even a slower reaction, however, doesn’t mean we don’t default to worrying/fearing eventually. I think we, as humans and born sinners, are pretty accomplished at doing the exact opposite of what we are told to do, yet we preach to others what the “royal we” should do as if we ourselves do it. The answer to what we should do when we worry or fear is clear…pray.
Philippians 4:6-7 New Living Translation (NLT)
6 Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. 7 Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
Pray about everything…really? Everything? I want you to consider who wrote the passage you just read – it was a man named Paul, and those were his words of encouragement from prison. Yep, prison – probably the most terrifying, uncomfortable, and unsanitary place there could be. Paul, however, was sitting there like, “meh, don’t worry about anything, it’s all good.” He not only said don’t worry but he gave us a reason as to why we shouldn’t! This man was writing this trapped. This man had to succumb to his reality, which was that he was truly helpless. According to the research done on this letter from Paul, he was facing the possibility of execution. He was in prison with dangers of its own and also facing the unknown of either being released or being killed, and he was all good with whatev-. It was fine. OK, maybe we can imagine Paul to be a little more anxious about his situation, but ultimately I believe he had peace and that is why he wanted to send the rest of the world encouragement – to share what he learned. Don’t worry about anything…instead pray about everything. He must have had an “ah ha” moment that he just couldn’t help but share. He realized that only in prayer can we find peace about anything and everything we worry about.
I truly believe when you pray there is an opportunity for a lesson. So when I recently told God that I was super tired, God started revealing to me all the opportunities there are for rest that I don’t take. I recently read something that compared our constant working to being slaves again like those God saved from Egypt. I don’t want to be a slave to my own schedule or my laundry list of things that I have to get done. Who’s with me? We were not put on this earth to merely kill ourselves working to achieve what the societal norm says we should. We were put on this earth and given a gift of love to share with the world because HE FIRST LOVED US. He doesn’t love our houses, our Starbucks, our cell phones, our game boxes, our favorite TV shows…He loves US, so it is each other who we should be serving to the point of exhaustion – not our things or ourselves. You can step away from serving others to rest, but if you are only centered on yourself, you will never find rest. Don’t put yourself into a slavery situation that God has to send plagues to get you out of. Maybe we should actually try to do what we are told by God instead of by other humans? One example, pray about everything, worry about nothing. We may already be doing better at this if he would have said to worry about everything and pray about nothing, given our hypocritical talents. There is a lesson in this as there are many lessons for us to learn, so pray, rest, and worry less – God said so. In your prayers and rest I hope you hear God’s voice telling you what comes next.
Untrained Christian 