Come to Me….

An invitation. Jesus says in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” If Jesus is inviting all of us who are weary & burdened to come to Him, then can we currently be with Him? I don’t think that’s possible. Can we have a relationship with someone & love someone with all of our hearts, yet not be “with them” in the present tense. You betcha! SO, could the same be true for our relationship with Jesus? You betcha! If we are “with” Jesus in the present tense, then we can’t be weary, because He sustains us and gives us rest. SO, it stands to reason that the only way to become weary is to not be sitting in our Savior’s lap. Oh, we can love Him, we can serve Him, we can be used by Him, we can even extend His love to others, but if don’t “remain in Him” we WILL become drained and weary. He’s inviting us to turn from whatever we are doing and wherever we are dwelling, to come to Him. This is an open-ended invitation that He leaves in our court. It is His desire that we dwell in Him and not become weary, but He loves us enough to give us to freedom to choose. He gives us the freedom to choose between weariness and rest. Thank you, Jesus!

But wait, there’s a catch. He’s telling us to come learn from Him, so that we can find rest for our souls. What are we to learn from Him in this context? We are to learn how to NOT become weary. We are to learn how to rest in Him? Well, how do we do that? How did Jesus do that? He did that by being gentle & humble. Hmmm… Humble… That word carries a huge weight with it. The weight is control, or lack there of. Jesus was humble; He calls us to be humble. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? It may sound simple, yet it is profound. Jesus could be humble and gentle because He was in full and complete submission to Father. He “dwelled” with Father in the present tense through Holy Spirit with every breath that He breathed while He walked this earth. He was gentle because Father is gentle. He was humble, because He made Himself nothing, taking the very nature of servant. HE WAS RADICALLY OBEDIENT!!! His FULL & COMPLETE SUBMISSION led to radical obedience. That is why He said His yoke is easy & His burden is light. His yoke was being COMPLETELY submissive to Father. WOW! Thank you, Jesus, for making life in you simple. I make life in you so very complex, yet you show me through Your Word how simple life was for you. Let’s not confuse simple, with easy. Your life was hard. I can never fully comprehend how hard your life must have been, but it was simple—submitting to Father’s will in EVERYTHING!!!

Another interesting observation about this passage is that Jesus says we will find rest for our souls. Our spirit should be at rest since that is where Holy Spirit dwells. That should just be a natural occurrence of receiving life in Christ. It stands to reason that where Holy Spirit lives, should be a place of peace, since that is a fruit of the Spirit. But our souls? What makes up our soul? God’s Word tells us that our soul is made up of our mind, will and emotions. This is the fleshly part of us. The part of us that is made up of our thoughts, our desires, our emotions. This is the part of us that the enemy seeks to attack and wound and destroy. This is the part of us that we have control over. You are telling me Jesus is inviting us to let the fleshly part of ourselves find rest in Him? Awesome! Thank you, Jesus, for this invitation. Not only can my spirit rest in You, but so can my soul. My soul can rest in you on one condition, the condition that I submit my mind, my will and my emotions fully and completely to you. Teach me, sweet Jesus. I want to learn from you! This is mercy! Thank you for your mercy!

Living in His Peace,

Lori