I just love a good retreat. Give me a clear schedule and nature to explore, and I’m there. But it hasn’t always been easy to experience real, restorative rest, whether on retreat or otherwise. Over the past three years, God has been undoing a lifetime of beliefs that kept me bound to achievement, productivity, and performance at all costs, rest included. For years, I would chase after rest, catching a glimpse here or there, but ultimately feeling more tired than before.
I would work, focus on work, work some more, and sacrifice sleep, day after day. Then, I’d go on a retreat to try to rest. Needless to say, that set me up for repeated disappointment. I had unknowingly trained myself not to rest. I knew enough to go on a retreat, but with no idea how to really rest. I learned the spiritual practices. Meditation, centering prayer, mindfulness practices, I mastered them all, but nothing I did could override my training. My thoughts would often be racing as if I was handling an imminent work project. I nodded along to discussions about winding down, unplugging, and relaxing, but none of those things seemed to “work” long term. I thought this was fairly normal.
2024 is the year things came to a head for me. I went on a weekend-long retreat, but even though the people, the setting, and everything about it couldn’t have been more idyllic, I spent the entire weekend in absolute misery. I walked in with a racing mind and pounding heart, and they would not slow down. Watching the fire in the fireplace, hearing calming music, even sleeping felt restless. For just a few precious seconds on the first full day, I was miraculously able to focus on nature during a walk instead of the storm inside, only to have my attention shift back again. Psalm 23 tells us that the Lord is the One thing that restores our souls, “He restores my soul. . . .” (Psalm 23:3a). When we can’t rest as we were intended to from the Beginning, no practices or tools have the healing power to restore us; we need God Himself for that.
As I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, we are all made in God’s image. God Himself rested after He worked, “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done” (Genesis 2:2). We too are intended to rest from our work. God, in His loving care, even made the Sabbath, a holy day of rest, for us; “but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy” (Genesis 20:10-11). Our rest is to be modeled after God’s own rest, and not only that, God blesses our rest! When we fail to rest, we can sorely miss out.
Rest is always just on the other side of surrender to Christ. It took months of re-training my thoughts, questioning beliefs, learning to let go, learning to really trust God, and learning not to let assumptions about others’ perceptions dictate my decisions. Slowly, I started to experience real rest again. My soul was being restored as much as I allowed God access to my heart, and that took time. Once surrender to Jesus became a regular practice in my life, rest finally didn’t seem so difficult anymore.
Now I can confidently say that God provides what we need, because I’ve experienced it for myself. There were no answers for me except for God’s ability and power to intervene on my behalf. He provides for us to rest, “so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:5). We don’t have to be afraid to let go of control; God is for us! Whether you struggle to rest like I did or not, we can all trust in God that by His power He is faithful to take care of us. We just need to let Him into our hearts; He is the Restorer of souls. Amen.
“So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his” (Hebrews 4:9-10).
For further reading, see Hebrews 3-4.
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