Effort and Rest

I have been wrestling for some time with the implications of my last post about walking in the light always requiring effort and why it is so difficult to do. It occured to me that part of the difficulty arises from Jesus' promises of rest...

"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." -- Matthew 11:28-29

I think we long for rest. So much of what we do that is ultimately destructive is because we are trying to numb out, veg out, just be and not do. The idea that we have to make an effort to enter into rest rather than just let it come upon us and over take us like sleep is rather disconcerting to us. And yet, that is what we are called to.

"There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. " --Hebrews 1:9-11

This all came together for me this week when I reread a devotional that is originally from "Won by One" by Ron Rand:

In 1857 a tightrope walker named Blondin stretched a two-inch cable across the gorge of the Niagara Falls, attracting a large crowd. He said to the onlookers, "How many of you believe that I can carry the weight of a man on my shoulders across this gorge?" The crowd shouted and cheered their belief that he could do it. Sure enough, Blondin picked up a sack of sand weighing about 180 pounds and carried it across the falls.

Then Blondin said, "How many of you believe that I can actually carry a person across the gorge?" Many people in the crowd indicated that they thought he could do it. Then Blondin called out, "Which one of you will climb on my shoulders and let me carry you across the falls?" Suddenly there was silence. Everyone wanted to see Blondin person across the gorge and many believed he could. But nobody wanted to put his life in Blondin's hands.

Some time later, Blondin did carry a man across Niagara Falls. The man was Blondin's manager, who had known the tightrope walker personally for many years. "You must not trust your own feelings, but mine," Blondin told his manager as they prepared for the crossing. "You will feel like turning when we don't need to turn. And if you trust your feelings, we will both fall. You must become part of me." (emphasis added)

That's when it all started coming together for me. We want to be carried but we don't want to do the work of TRUSTING the one who carries us. We don't want to feel like turning when we don't need to turn. We just want to be part of him, to be one and not question, to know his ways and do them because we understand what He is doing.

But that is not the deal. We know he is 100% able to do what he is offering. We KNOW it. We've seen him do it in other's lives, maybe at times even in our own. (Just imagine how many people would have taken Blondin up on the offer to go across the tightrope if there were a hungry lion prowling around.) No the deal is to trust him and move with him when we don't understand what He is doing or why. We put our trust in His ability and who He is not in our understanding of what He is doing. This has given fresh perspective for me to the well known verse:

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight." -- Proverbs 3:5-6

I am now starting to look at challenges in my life to do what I know I should...but resist because well, frankly, I just don't want to (eat right, exercise, consider other's needs ahead of my own, walk in the light)...from the perspective of is this me wanting to turn when we don't need to? Am I resting in His ability, acknowledging Him and allowing Him to make the way for us? His peace comes when we understand that we don't need to understand WHAT, we just need to understand WHO and that comes from coming to Him, fellowshipping with Him, knowing Him, becoming part of Him.

A Part To Play

It occurs to me that the chief enemy of doing good in this imperfect world, of loving others, of walking in the light is that it requires effort. We actually have to do something, choose something and not just once for all but over and over again. While choosing Christ brings us salvation once for all, we are called to live out that choice moment by moment and that requires effort. It requires attention and intention so that we are stayed on Jesus and aligning ourselves with His will in every choice, every time. There really is no coasting. It is the taking up of your cross daily (Luke 9:23), putting on the full armor of God and standing your ground (Ephesians 6:13), and running the race marked out for us (Hebrews 12:1). It even requires effort to "Be still and know that I am God" (Psalm 46:10). We are called to be involved and engaged in what God is doing. We are not placeholders. He has a plan and a purpose for each one of us (Jeremiah 29:11) and we are to play our part.

There is a huge fear factor in that knowledge because of our fear of failure and our insecurity about our own value. We'd rather not be responsible for showing up and doing our part in case we mess it up, disappointing and perhaps even harming those who are counting on us. We'd rather just be part of the audience, part of the experience, a face in the crowd. I think this because we tend to think we are responsible for the results. But the enabling power to bear the fruit comes from God. The end of the play is not dependent on us. We are responsible for the part we are called to do so that we can share in what God has done. God doesn't need us in order to produce fruit. He wants us to share in the benefits of producing fruit.

Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. John 15:4-5

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will last... John 15:16

It takes effort to remain in God, to stay focused on Him, to follow him. But the victory has already been won, the outcome known. That knowledge should release us from the fear of ultimate failure and make the effort sustainable.

Doing Good

"Use every chance you have for doing good, because these are evil times." -- Ephesians 5:16

"Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. Therefore as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people..." -- Galatians 6:9

I stumbled upon these two verses in the same day and it struck me again that we are called by God to focus on the positive in this life, fully aware that it is difficult to do so because the times are evil and we do not see the harvest immediately.

We are instructed to look past circumstances and find a chance, an opportunity to do good and then to do it. I think we too often look past the opportunities to do good that we find because we don't see how they are going to "pan out" for good. We don't see how what we plant in that opportunity could ever be harvested into anything that amounts to much.

But as a speaker at my church recently said "We do the planting and the watering and God does the growing." In a way that's much easier. I'm off the hook for producing the fruit. I just have to look for places that seem to need some water or a seed or a little weeding and then do that, trusting God to produce the harvest at the right time.