NOTE: This is the fifth preview excerpt of my book In The Midst of Madness: A Christian’s Experience with Anxiety and Finding Relief. The book will be available on Jan. 12, 2018.
A Place to Rest
Late in high school and then in college, when I was struggling with my relationship anxiety, my mother shared Matthew 11:28 with me many times. It’s a crucial truth to remember for any Christian, but it speaks almost specifically to those with anxiety.
Jesus is speaking about how God has given wisdom to little children and how we can know the Father through the Son. Then, verses 28-30:
“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
Jesus tells his audience that He is the place where rest can be found, where those who work hard can be relived of their weariness. So He tells them, “Come to me. I am the place where you will find rest.” What He asks of them, He says, is not heavy. It’s not something heavy to carry. Just listen and learn, and you’ll find rest for your souls.
That part is important. It’s rest for your soul. Following Jesus doesn’t mean that you get to be lazy and do nothing. It means a spiritual rest, a rest for your soul, a rest from fearing whether or not you were on God’s side.
The Jews he was speaking to at the time had lived for years in a spiritual state where laws had to be followed, rules had to be observed, or else you were disobeying God’s law and you were looked down upon by others. The Hebrew law was all about working your way to salvation. I don’t know about you, but if I had to work my way to salvation, I would never be at rest spiritually.
What Jesus offered them and offers to us is a spiritual rest. It’s a rest that means we don’t have to work our way to salvation or to God’s favor. We don’t have to do a certain number of things or be a certain number of things before God loves us and cares for us. We don’t have to believe all the right things all the time. There is no standard of “doing enough for Jesus” that makes Him love us any more if we reach it or any less if we don’t.
When we come to Christ, He offers us a rest that goes far beyond anything that humanity can construct on their own. He literally says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”
For some of us, our souls spend so much time striving to be the “right soul,” to think and believe and do and say the right thing every single minute of every single day. But all that Jesus asks is that we come and believe and trust Him. That’s it. We’ll get all that other stuff worked out in time as we follow Jesus, as we get closer to Him.
One thing to remember is that it’s not the perfect people who come and get rest. The people who were found the most around Jesus while He was on Earth were the outcasts, lepers, rejects, drunkards, losers, gluttons, tax collectors, sinners. The lowest. The pariahs. There’s nothing preventing you from coming to Jesus and finding rest for your soul, finding relief from the anxiety and the nervous thoughts that prey on you, because, at the very least, He’s used to people like you and actually likes hanging out with people like you.
If you’re a Christian, you no longer have to work for God’s approval. You don’t have to fear. You can trust and believe. And then you can rest.
By A Ransomed Soul 