Scriptures make many declarations about rest and peace. Jesus said, “My PEACE I leave you,” and “Come unto Me all you who are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.” Again, “My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.” In other words, Jesus is stress-free!
At the beginning of COVID, I was utterly stressed out. I was carrying the cares of the world on my shoulder. I was required to perform a religious show for the spectators who would come and watch week after week.
I felt like a cook preparing a four-course meal each week, only to have everyone push the meat and asparagus to the side, pick and choose a few bites here and there, and then wait for dessert.
It was in the COVID season of life that God began to show me about rest—not just getting enough sleep but actually learning to rest in Him.
Jesus is not the author of confusion or stress. He doesn’t place burdens or heavy weights on His followers. He gives peace and rest, and He desires us to live in that position of rest all the time.
In the season, I began to learn that I was carrying things that God never asked me to carry and doing things that God never asked me to do. I was following what I thought others expected me to do, and that burden was a heavy load.
People make high demands of one another; we even make high demands of ourselves, but Jesus does not.
Jesus doesn’t ask you to do something because you can. He asks you to do something because He can.
Jesus doesn’t ask you to do something because you can.
He asks you to do something because He can.
Years ago, I always felt stressed about doing ministry work. I was pushed beyond what I could handle because that was what was expected, but it wasn’t what God expected.
When COVID hit, we had a few weeks of breathing room. I enjoyed that season for a bit. I was finally able to rest. While other ministry people I knew were scrambling to do something new, get on YouTube and Facebook, and stream our show, God had me in a place of rest. He literally would not allow me to scramble with the rest of them. He told me, “I’m going to teach you about resting in Me.”
I’ll never forget Him saying to my heart, “Do you think this epidemic catches me off? Do you think I am stressed to keep the church business going? Do you think this bothers me? Do you think I’m stressed out?
The answer is obviously “No.” Jesus wasn’t stressed and didn’t want me to be either.
For a few months, God taught me about rest, restore, and restoration. All of those begin with rest. You cannot start to restore or have restoration unless you are first willing to rest. Again, I’m not talking about sleep but resting in Jesus, trusting that He is the one who is in charge.
We have a quaint saying that “God is in control” when, in fact, He has yielded control to us. If He were in control, things would have to be different, but it is because God has yielded that control to man that the world is in such a mess. God is not in control, but He is still in charge.
Jesus desires us to be at rest in all that we do. If you read the account of His life in scripture, you never see a stressed man. Even when He is on His way to the cross, He is at peace. He is trusting in the ONE who sent Him. He is at rest in the midst of a great trial.
That is what God desires for us.
I must admit that for much of my life, I lived full of stress, and honestly, there are still moments when I will “stress out,” but I am working to release that stress to Him and stay in peace.
Scripture says He will keep us in perfect peace if we keep our minds focused on Him (Isaiah 26:3).
When I experience those moments, I have to quiet myself and know that God is there (Psalm 46:10). He hasn’t left me. He is there, and He is still God, and His perfect peace is still completely available to me.
During that COVID season, God began to show me that if I was stressed out doing His work, then maybe it wasn’t His work that I was doing. Perhaps it was my work, and I was calling it “The Lord’s Work.” Or worse, maybe it was a demonic trick to keep me busy with things that weren’t important.
I realized that a lot of what I called “the work of the ministry” was just a waste of time. Not that they weren’t good or even beneficial, but they weren’t His work. And if they weren’t His work, then I was spinning my wheels, hoping that He would be pleased with all of my spinning.
That was a hard lesson to learn and even more challenging to implement. I recall when we entered into a more normal pattern of religious service during COVID, that there was tremendous pressure on me to go back and do all the things that I had been doing before. There was an expectation, whether intentional or not, that I needed to keep the church business flowing as I had done for years. But Jesus wasn’t the one who was pushing that message.
During that year of COVID, I realized Jesus wasn’t a hard taskmaster. He was a loving brother, a kind friend, a gentle shepherd, a caring Savior, and so much more. He was Good and wasn’t there to burden me to work for the Lord. He wanted me to be at rest.
Rest doesn’t mean lazy or idle. It wasn’t that I wasn’t supposed to be about the Father’s business. It was that His business wasn’t necessarily the business of doing church. His business looked different from three songs and a sermon, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday.
There are still times when I get a little frazzled because I am not doing enough or that God is not pleased with me. But then I realize that if I am doing what He says to do, then I am doing all that matters.
If I find myself frazzled and stressed while doing the work of ministry, then maybe it isn’t His work that I am doing at all. Maybe?
