Matthew 11:28 “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.
Matthew 11:29 “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.
Come away with Me to a quiet place and rest for awhile. MK 6:31
I believe God is saying today, “I AM Rest for the weary.”
To ‘give rest’ in verse 28 in The Complete Word Study dictionary has this meaning:
anapaúō; To cease, give rest. To give rest, quiet, recreate, refresh
Don’t you love those words ‘quiet, recreate, refresh’?
In the next verse when it says “you will find rest” this variation of the word is used:
anápausis; fem. noun from anapaúō (G373), act., to give rest. Rest, inward tranquility while one performs necessary labor
What a thought!! ‘Inward tranquility while one performs necessary labor’. Does this describe you?
He is our Rest and the only place to find this inward tranquility is in Him. He says when we come to Him we will find this rest.
“Come to Me all you who are weary and heavy-laden and I will give you rest.”
He also says: “In Him we live and move and have our being”. Acts 17:28a
It is ‘in Him’ that we find ‘rest for our souls’. “In Him” is a pretty significant phrase in the New Testament and worthy of study. But we’ll save that for another day.
Our world is weary. I hear it when I talk to people, I see it in their faces, and often it comes out of their mouths…bone tired and weary to the core.
What does it mean to be weary? Dictionary.com says this:
- physically or mentally exhausted by hard work, exertion, strain, etc.; fatigued; tired: weary eyes; a weary brain.
- characterized by or causing fatigue: a weary journey.
- patient or dissatisfied with something (often followed by of): weary of excuses.
- characterized by or causing impatience or dissatisfaction; tedious; irksome: a weary wait.
I believe we become weary because we are trying ‘to do it ourselves’. He is our Rest but we have to come to Him and lean on Him. He won’t force us, but when we take one step, just one step, in His direction (which indicates a turn toward Him) He responds. It’s His promise to us. Remember the phrase, ‘inward tranquility while one performs necessary labor’. That’s the complete opposite of ‘weary’.
Jeremiah 33:3 ‘Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.’
Will you call today?
Matthew 18:3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven
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