God's Promises: He Will Give Us Rest

Photo by Jackson Simmer


It's been a while because these kinds of posts require some intentional processing, and I've been feeling a bit worn down. No particular reason, just life trudging on. But, isn't God in it all? I had already chosen the theme for this post about a month ago, and it proved to be infinitely timely for me and perhaps for you too. Furthermore, when I sat down to write this post, I decided that I needed some music to get my brain moving. My go-to these days is Tribl's YouTube channel. The first song I pulled up was "Jireh" by Elevation Worship and Maverick City Music (which is often featured on the Tribl channel). I had never heard it before. Please read the lyrics (or pull it up yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC-zw0zCCtg) while I get myself a tissue:

I’ll never be more loved than I am right now
Wasn’t holding You up so there’s nothing I can do to let You down
Doesn’t take a trophy to make You proud
I’ll never be more loved than I am right now

Going through a storm but I won’t go down
I hear Your voice carried in the rhythm of the wind to call me out
You would cross an ocean so I wouldn’t drown
You’ve never been closer than You are right now

Jireh, You are enough
Jireh You are enough
I will be content in every circumstance
Jireh You are enough

Don’t wanna forget how I feel right now
On the mountaintop I can see so clear what it’s all about
Stay by my side when the sun goes down
Don’t wanna forget how I feel right now

I’m already loved
I’m already chosen
I know who I am
I know what You’ve spoken
I’m already loved
More than I could imagine
And that is enough
That is enough
You are enough
So I am enough

If He dresses the lilies with beauty and splendor
How much more will He clothe you
How much more will He clothe you
If He watches over every sparrow
How much more does He love you
How much more does He love you
More than you ask, think or imagine
According to His power working in us
It’s more than enough

This year in September, I will celebrate 10 years of living in Honduras. Ten years of missions work. The longest I've lived anywhere in my whole life. And as I've been taking these counseling classes, I've been recognizing that so much of my missions life, I've just been in it. Just running forward or waiting for my next instruction or struggling because I'm on the bench. Before coming to the mission field, I spent a lot of time sorting through my junk--childhood fears, insecurities, relational patterns. Certainly, I have also kept growing even sometimes just out of necessity for longevity here. Learning to have boundaries has been the crowning grace of the last half of my missions life. But, prior to those years, there were a lot of experiences that just didn't get actively processed in-depth. When I had kids living with me, I stopped journaling. Part of that was time. The other part of it, honestly, was because I was so overwhelmed by everything I was fielding and all of the past trauma stories I was hearing and all of the present, residual trauma that was getting played out that I didn't have it in me to re-hash that stuff in writing. I remember going into so many church services in that time period and just curling into a corner to cry the whole time. I just didn't have anything left in me. I didn't have language at the time for what was going on within me; I was just surviving. Now I can identify it as secondhand trauma.

In this season, I am seeing a strong thread from that period of time that leads directly to a current fear of being depleted. Recently, Raúl and I have been inundated with the needs of others. I say recently, but to be honest, that's the norm around this joint. Having boundaries doesn't mean that the needs around us stop. We're still constantly assessing with the Holy Spirit what are needs of relief that we are called to be present to and what are needs that lead to unhealthy dependency. Both of us have been lied to or extorted over the years, so there is also the element of the energy needed to discern truthfulness. When we've sat down together to compare notes, I can hear that we're both tired. We're both feeling that internal tug of war between that exhaustion and the compulsion toward compassion that we feel. For me, at least, even if I'm sticking to an external boundary, I'm still emotionally involved, even if only internally. I still feel torn--one moment there is extensive compassion about someone's circumstance, the next moment I'm angry at no one in particular over the needs that never subside or hurt when a relationship seems one-sided, then I feel guilty for being angry and hurt. Why can't I just be above that? There's just no great answer, and trust me when I say I'm still sorting all of this out little by little with the Holy Spirit. Suffice it to say that I've been feeling as missionary Heidi Baker says, like a cactus, just a prickly bush, prickling at everything. I can't tell you what a relief it was to read in my very clinical textbook that compassion fatigue is a natural response to "sustained empathetic engagement" aka life as a missionary. The relief came from recognizing that there's no need for guilt when compassion fatigue sets in. We were made with limitations. Yes, compassion fatigue is preventable, and certainly, in the field I'm currently pursuing, prevention of compassion fatigue is drilled into our heads as vitally necessary. That was not the case when I became a missionary.

I think within missionary or even ministry culture (and let's be honest, so many other cultures) we feel like it's a badge of honor to run ourselves into the ground. Certainly, the examples that I had around me when I first came to the mission field were a total lack of boundaries, just tireless going, going, going. The subtle comparison that can creep up in a field with such variety doesn't help. If the person beside me has been living and serving that way for more time than I've been alive, what's wrong with me? As an introvert, for a long time, I just felt like something was wrong with me. I just needed to push myself more. I just needed more experience, more compassion. The short story end to that season was depletion, an exhaustion to a level that I had never known before, have never known since, and have no wish to repeat. Yet, what has lingered just below the surface even after recovering has been the question of whether I will ever be enough, whether I'm ever doing enough, and the fear of returning to that level of compassion fatigue. I know on a cognitive level that I cannot earn God's love, and that nothing that I do is my value to Him. But I have also had so many religious experiences that war with that knowledge. The demand. The hierarchy. The positions. The needs. The relationships that depend entirely on my service and that disappear when I need a rest. The approval that rides solely on my compliance.

Recently, when I was unpacking some of this with the Lord, the challenge I felt like I received from Him with a gentle authority was to get more in touch with and more intentional about naming my own needs to Him. In Matthew 11:28-30, it says:

“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” -- The Message

28 “Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden? Come to me. I will refresh your life, for I am your oasis. Simply join your life with mine. Learn my ways and you’ll discover that I’m gentle, humble, easy to please. You will find refreshment and rest in me. For all that I require of you will be pleasant and easy to bear.” -- The Passion Translation

We can't receive God's rest until we're willing to admit that we're worn out. We can't fully receive comfort until we're ready to confess that we have had loss or hurt. Sometimes, our prayers can become blanket routines or just exasperated utterances. Sometimes, we need to be willing to sit in our needs for a while--no covering our nakedness with quick-fix solutions or internal determinations to try harder or escapism from the feelings our needs bring up. My needs may be different than the ones being presented to me on a regular basis, but they are still there. Throwing myself into the needs of others doesn't exempt me from needing myself. And, we won't be in need unless we've been depleted somehow. This is the paradox of genuine relationship with the Lord. We don't get to be the givers. We don't get to be self-sufficient. That's not the role we were made for. At this point in missions, I don't want to be the Giver. I don't want others to depend on me in unhealthy ways. I know so clearly that I am not self-sufficient. But have I taken one step further to really experience just how needy I am? I'm not so sure.

A while ago, a friend of mine and I were talking about the word "lavish" and the idea of how God lavishes His love on us in ways that go above and beyond even our needs. Abundance, limitless generosity, and extravagance all go along with that word. In the same way, the examples we are given in the Bible of someone lavishing their love on Jesus or showing their lavish devotion all involve someone giving all that they have or giving to the point that those around them even feel cause for calling it wasteful. That's the difference between us and God--while He knows no bounds to the abundance He can offer, we are limited in that all that we have is ourselves. Thus, to give lavishly for us humans means to deplete ourselves, to spend ourselves entirely. I actually think that that's what we're called to; it goes along with losing our lives to gain the life that God intends for us in Him. But, it does beg the question of why, then, do I feel so fearful of being depleted?

The answer resides, I believe, in the cause for which we deplete ourselves. I have found, looking back, that I have been guilty of confusing the yoke that God is placing upon me with the yoke that I am placing on myself, that others are placing on me, or that my own projections of what others' expectations are is placing on me. When you're making this mistake in ministry or in church or just in life, this also leads to a lot of confusion about what God is asking of you and what He is not asking of you. We humans tend to like success in tangible, visible ways. We like numbers and results. We like a list of accolades to justify our efforts and existence. That's just not God's culture. So many of the saints that went before us spent themselves for a legacy they never saw on earth. That's because God's definition of success isn't wired like ours. He likes process, intimacy, relationship, growth. He plays the long game. He doesn't take shortcuts on those things. Relationships, health, and God's yoke, unfortunately, can get lost in our religious cultures. We can tend to feel like doing something for God, bringing Him a pile of programs and people who have "prayed the prayer" or meeting a quota of prayer or Bible reading is the end goal when I think He's really after spending time with us, teaching us His ways of doing things, and letting us be transformed just by close association. Many times, I have felt like God led me to failure because my ideas of how productive and fruitful I was going to be didn't come to fruition, but in actuality, I don't think that was God's expectation or purpose at all. When I look back at those so-called failures, what I see in lieu of a neat list of results is a lot of messy growth and deepened dependency on God. My point is that we often deplete ourselves doing the shoulds--we should be available for anyone who needs us at any time, we should be involved in all of the programs, we should be able to justify all of our efforts as being fruitful, we should meet all the needs around us. Who told us that? Is it coming from our own ego or from the culture we've immersed ourselves in? I ask because I don't think the Creator who knows our human limitations all too well would expect something of us He knows fully we are limited to complete in our own strength. Yes, we are called to be depleted, but we deplete ourselves for Him, in relationship with Him, in obedience to Him, in pursuing closeness with Him. It's not just an offering; it's an exchange because He has no limits to what He can lavish in return. When we deplete ourselves in this way with the Lord, we will find ourselves being more fully the person He actually created us to be. We pour ourselves out; He fills us back up. When we allow ourselves to be depleted according to His yoke and His strategies, that will involve people because God does care deeply about the humans He created. But, we aren't depleting ourselves for people. It's not the needs of the people that drives us. It's the love of the One who knows our limitations better than we do. It's a subtle shift, but it changes everything. He will ask us to do extraordinary, and at times, seemingly impossible things, but if He's the One doing the asking, He's also the One doing the replenishing, the providing, the steadying, and the imparting of strength and wisdom. 

The times in my life when I have given extravagantly of myself, my time, my finances, my resources, whatever, because I knew deeply that God was asking me to, I have had no tug of war once the gift has been given. No buyer's (in this case, lender's or giver's) remorse. No sense of oppressive obligation. No pain or hurt if the relationship is one-sided. No regret even if the recipient stewarded the gift questionably. The reason being that I wasn't doing it directly for the recipient anyway. That person was off the hook from the get-go, and I was free to love them extravagantly because I knew I had my Father loving me extravagantly. I can't say the same for when I have given out of obligation, because it was expected, because my boundary game sucked, or because I let fear of someone else's response be the boss. 

This brings me to our promise:
Even when we have spent ourselves for the wrong things or for the wrong people or for the wrong motivations, if we will come to Him, He will give us rest. In the same way that He is lovingly giving me the space to process prior years in ministry and to sort out what was Him and what was me or someone else, He will give us the resources we need to find His yoke and path again . . . to find Him again, really. If we will re-commit ourselves to keeping Him company above all else, we will begin to find our way out of that hole of exhaustion and begin to pick up the pieces of ourselves that have been scattered in our shoulding efforts. And, when we are lining ourselves up with His will and His way again, depletion is only an invitation to be refilled to overflowing. I would only encourage you (and myself) to be intentional about recovering. Don't just pout in the stillness. Don't let bitterness take hold. Name the need. Breathe it in, embrace it, really feel it, and share it with Him. Here is one last promise about His response to our needs:

"If imperfect parents know how to lovingly take care of their children and give them what they need, how much more will the perfect heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit’s fullness when his children ask him.” -- Luke 11:13, The Passion Translation