Our God is Rest.
He is peace, deep, wonder, comfort, presence, home. He is stilled yet active, He is constant. He longs to bring us into the promise, and inheritance of rest, being at rest in and with Him. He invites us to live a rhythm of rest in who He is. Unhurried, ceased from our striving, confident, consistent, pure and undefiled. At home. Home in Him. Our invitation to rest is not inactive, we are far from called to be inactive or detached, we are engaged and responsive yet at our core we have the gift of being fully still and in rest. We are a people anchored, even though versatile and mobile. We live wildly in His Spirit, for to be led is to move, and to know His wildness is to also know His rest. He is Rest as much as He is Good and Love, it’s not merely a verb but also a noun attributed to Him. As Sons we fully embrace the adventure, yet our posture of heart is not subject to the things of the world. We are invited to be still, to move in quiet confidence- trust, in His love for us and people of His love, His authority and ways. Rest is a fruit of our dependence, as we bring our yielded lives unto Him. We apprehend the climate of Heaven, our rest mingled with joy and delight, as we see Him rightly.
Many are the forces that constantly pull on our hearts and lives to lead us from the promise of and rhythm of rest, but as we spend ourselves in the company of our God, who is Rest, we learn to know His heart and can cast off the temptation to hustle and strive. We can be still and know.
Psalm 46:10 invites us to “ Be still, and know that I am God.”
This invitation is a prophetic promise and decree that wraps around all we are in terms of ‘Wild Rest’ and is the heart of the invitation we invite others to experience. God is speaking to His beloved directly and expressing His promise to His people. He affirms the promise, if you trust me, lean in, let go and quieten our hearts, we can become familiar, acquitted, intimate, experience Him, personally, in the details, in the ‘all’ of our moments. As we actively bring ourselves into rest, stillness we find Him and in so doing respond to life from who and where He is.
When we consider rest we often think about inactivity, yet in its truest form rest is a rhythm, it is engaged and even active. When we discover rest, we find it is a posture of the heart; we have our being at rest and in quiet confidence of knowing God and having the perspective and grace to enter into His delight. Rest is central to our story of becoming. We learn in Genesis God created, fashioned and formed, laboured and He rested; but in that posture of rest He was doing something integral that often we overlook. It states He rested, He saw, and He saw it was good, He took delight. Taking delight is a core part of being at rest and entering into the promised rhythm of rest.
We are invited to be still and know, we are shown that in the rhythm of pause and rest that The Father demonstrated was a place of delight. We take delight in Him, in His character, names, ways, His presence, and His being with us. There is delight at hand. In the promise of rest there is a possession of delighting in who He made us to be, what surrounds us, seeing things ‘rightly’. Rest apprehended His goodness.
Often, we find we are most rested when we partake in something; an activity, a relationship that delights us. This is definitely the case for me. I could be at home with no real demands and be far from rest's posture because in fact my heart is not engaged in the delightful aspect that conceives our promised rest. So true is it that I could be hosting a gathering and engaged with a huge 'to do' list but my heart and being is in the rhythm of rest, because I delight in that expression of my heart, I connect with core values and truths, and despite apparent chaos, I am still at my core.
This is why we believe in the power of ‘family’ over association, and it’s a core value in our lives because, when we can be true and experience and know belonging, there we find our deepest rest. Belonging and love at the core is an expression and experience of being delighted in. And so, in our rest, our belonging to Him, we take delight, we experience delight and it is well with us, we are stilled in the knowing of Him, we share in delight; which is loving kindness wrapped in His goodness ever reaching and enfolding us. We take delight in what He has given us and how He made us to experience delight, here we rest. Here our truest sound is heard, our authentic self comes alive, is revealed, here we find a wider more open space to be with Him and to know Him and enjoy Him, for to delight in Him is to be close.
This is our selah and posture where delight is at hand, rest is our rhythm and where we belong, and know.
And so we pray, may the God of all Hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him, so that you may overflow with Hope in the power of the Holy Spirit. And, May you prefer and protect stillness in the swirl, so you can live in response to Him, close, intimate and familiar. Possessing the full measures of His promises.