Do You Trust God Enough to Rest?

It’s a tough question to ask yourself. What do trust and rest have to do with each other? Let’s dive in a take a look.

Work and the Side-Hustle

We work a lot as Americans. Even as other countries are beginning to explore shorter work weeks and more vacation time for employees, America seems to be working harder than ever. Until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, of course.

So much has come to a grinding halt, and we’re just now beginning to re-open. There’s a glimpse of normalcy somewhere out there on the horizon. The temptation is going to be to jump back into life exactly as it was before all this craziness hit. Our side-hustles will ramp up. We’ll go back to strenuous work weeks.

But I hope we don’t.

37% of Americans have a side-hustle of some sort. Side-hustles aren’t bad (you’re reading one right now). But add in things like church, school, kids activities, social life, and housekeeping, and we’ve been burning the candle at both ends for a while now.

In many ways, this crisis provided a break we never knew we needed. Don’t misunderstand, this has been a challenge for many—some without jobs, some without a strong social structure… I’ve been struggling because queso has been so hard to come by. You know, serious issues.

But in many ways, I think we’ve also learned something valuable about ourselves: we need rest.

Rest

If we come out of a season such as this and jump right back into business as usual, I think we’re missing something important. We need to learn from this. We need grow through this.

One of the experiences I think many of us have shared over the last few weeks is that we’ve rediscovered what it looks like to slow down a little bit. As much as we’re longing for normalcy and our social cups to be filled, it’s been kind of nice to not be going and going and going, right?

Why don’t we look for ways to keep that a part of our lives?

In addition to the mental and physical benefits of rest, I think there’s an often overlooked component, especially for believers.

The more we learn to rest, the more we learn to trust.

Trust and Strength

I think a major component in our lack of rest is our lack of trust in God’s provision. Now, I know you’re already formulating your defense. I get it. No one wants to be told they don’t trust God.

I don’t think it’s that we overtly struggle with trust. It’s a subtle, subliminal distrust. I think we all know that He takes care of His kids. But sometimes it’s hard to live that trust out.

Look at the nation of Israel: they’d just seen God do incredible works in bringing them out of slavery in Egypt and providing for them in powerful ways. Yet, when God provides food for them and tells them that they will have plenty to carry them through rest on the seventh day, what do they do? Do they sleep in and rest on the seventh day, trusting God’s provision?

Nope!

“The people went out to gather, but they found none.” - Exodus 16:27

Israel had seen incredible things, and they still couldn’t trust God’s provision for a single day.

Our struggle isn’t much different. We work and go and do and live a crazy life, in part because we’re like little squirrels darting here and there at everything that looks like an acorn, we’re so easily distracted, but also because at some deep level, it’s just hard to trust in anything but the labors of our own hands.

In Isaiah 30:15, God tells the us through the prophet, “‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.’ But you were unwilling.”

Where is our salvation? In rest. Where is our strength? In quietness and trust. I love the way the CSB translates it: “your strength will lie in quiet confidence.”

That’s powerful. Let that sink in a little bit.

As the world starts to slowly turn again, remember these things. Remember that it’s in quiet confidence in God that we find our strength and our salvation.

Don’t buy into the lie that we have to get back to February’s normal. We have to hunt for whatever the new normal looks like.

Give yourself permission for that new normal to include a little more rest.