How to Rest and Trust God

How many performance junkies am I “talking to” right now?

If you fessed up, you are in really good company. I was a performance junkie for years and years. Part of it was because I was truly created, just like you, in the image and likeness of God to do great things. He gave me gifts and talents, just like He gave you, to be used and stewarded well. The problem was I got my identity from what I did. It went like, “if I’m not an excellent ‘doctor’, ‘wife’, ‘mother’, ‘minister’… who am I?” I didn’t like to engage with those nagging questions because I was afraid of the answers. Another problem was that I used constant busyness to medicate emotional pain.  

GOD DEALS WITH MY HEART

So, what did God do? He walked me through various seasons. During my “I-get-my-identity-from-being-a-minister” season, He kept me hidden, even while ministering and ministering well. One time, a prophet came to my house and told me God had an exercise for me. I was to sit for 45 minutes a day for one week and just listen to worship music. I knew it was God. But sitting and just listening to worship music was torture. It was so agitating. I didn’t have a demon– I had unresolved emotional issues that needed to be dealt without the medication of busyness. It was truly an eye-opener as I obeyed, but counted down the minutes and seconds!

He led me to get more ministry to heal some very deep woundedness and insecurities and stay with it for the time necessary to resolve them.

Then, I went through a stage where He literally put me on a shelf – no ministry at all. And throughout that whole time He led me to study and meditate on rest. He led me to mediate on and practice ongoing intimacy with Him.

REST IS THE TRUE FLAVOR OF FAITH

Rest is the flavor of true faith. It is saying with your heart, “I trust You. You’ve got this, God and You have me and everything I care about.” Rest can be accompanied by a significant amount of things to do. It is a position of the heart more than a position of the body.

Rest Is a Freaky Thing

When the people who should have come through for you through abandonment, neglect, abuse, or whatever, instead let you down, trusting enough to rest can be a very hard, seemingly impossible thing. That is why the word says we should “labor to enter the rest of God”. (Heb. 4:11) God knows it is a freaky thing to rest, when trusting Him is counter to our experience and the natural world in general. It requires supernatural empowerment. It requires the faith of God, Himself.

HOW TO REST AND TRUST GOD

However God walks you into the place of rest and trust, it will begin with developing your intimacy with Him. Grace and peace are multiplied through the intimate knowledge of the One Who loved you and gave Himself up for you – the One Who has your back! It is easy to have faith when you know you are extravagantly loved by an all powerful Person.

HAPPY REST

God has done such a work in me, that if I find myself getting into striving – I stop, drop and roll back into His love. I have gotten used to a default of rest and enjoying His presence. And let’s be clear, I work a lot and work “hard”, but I pull on His grace to rest and enjoy in the process and release care to Him. It’s a happy, carefree thing. And God is no respecter of persons. If He helped and helps me – He will help you! So, step out into happy rest!

If you need help with this, there is a whole chapter about resting in God named “Freaky Rest” in my book, “Marked by Love”. For more information, click here.