Rest As A Discipline

REST is becoming much more important to me.  Not just because I'm getting older, but because I am more keenly aware of my prone-ness to error without it.  This weekend proved to be good for me.  I say it like that because I was very fitful in my resting...There's a lot going on in my world right now, many things that I'm responsible for and worried about.  It was a real effort to let my hands "release the plow", and I fretted for a while about what I wasn't doing, and what was waiting for me when I got back to work.  But as time went on, and I continued to pray for God's peace and love and grace to soak into my soul, I gradually let down and started feeling the effects of His perspective and comfort.  I slept well last night and woke up refreshed...ready to roll, but with less anxiety and more connection with my Master.

This morning I was reading a blog from 3DM, a ministry blog I subscribe to...it said:

"But now more than ever the word about Jesus spread abroad; many crowds would gather to hear him and to be cured of their diseases. But he would withdraw to deserted places and pray." (Luke 5.15-16)

"Jesus lived a regular rhythm: crowds/solitude, preaching/prayer, healing/rest. He was well acquainted with the deserted places in and around Galilee. Regularly he would return to the desert, the place of his 40 day fast, to reconnect with the Father. To listen. To be filled with all the fullness of God."

"Why would the God-made-flesh spend such a large portion of his 3 years of active ministry ‘taking a break’? Wouldn’t he want to get all he could out of those 36 months? Preach as many sermons, heal as many lepers, perform as many signs as he could? Yes he did, but the man who had such a short time to bless the world also knew that his productivity for the kingdom was directly proportional to his connectivity to the King."

"If God-made-flesh needed to abide in the midst of 3 years of ministry it would follow that his disciples (those who are ‘with Jesus to learn from Jesus how to live like Jesus’) would need seasons of abiding in the midst of their ministry. Unless, of course, we think we need to be less dependent on God the Father than Jesus."