I don’t find out about you, but once I come home from a protracted day, the very first thing I do is drop my bags on the door, take off my shoes, and alter into comfortable clothes. I remove every thing that’s weighed me down all day because I’m home and able to rest.
It’s not resting if I’m also scheming, manipulating, or strategizing a approach to get something I would like. That’s not resting. Resting in God means selecting to put down our self-reliant ways of accessing more. God wants us to rely fully on him and his grace and, due to this fact, be at rest.
What I actually need during my most restless seasons, and what I proceed to want day-to-day, is to see my current circumstances the way in which God does. I needed to align my perspective along with his and to call on him now, to trust him now, to walk with him now, to obey him now.
This might mean you and I want to stop on the lookout for a treatment for our restlessness and press into it as an alternative.
Okay, but how?
Simply put, I believe it starts with being honest about why we’re restless, naming what we predict we don’t have, and talking to the Lord about those not yets in our lives. We can’t do the work in our own hearts or with God if we’re not honest about what we’re really battling or what we predict is missing in our lives. Worldly counsel might suggest that we name what we would like as a approach to manifest and achieve goals for ourselves, but what I’m proposing is totally different.
We’re not naming the source of our restless longings to will into being what we predict we deserve. Instead, we’re naming the source of our restless longings to be able to see them through the lens of God’s story of redemption—through gospel glasses, in case you will. Only through this lens will we discover the true treatment for our discontent and eager for what’s unfulfilled, not yet, or not enough.
Let me give you a straightforward rubric for self-assessment:
- What circumstance is causing my restlessness?
- What underlying identity or self-worth issues am I battling?
- According to God’s Word and wisdom, is the treatment for what I want present in myself or in him? In my efforts or in God’s work?
- How can I stop scrambling and begin resting right where I’m?
Here’s an example of an honest confession of restlessness from my early motherhood days:
God, I’m restless for greater than the thankless job of adjusting diapers, cleansing the home, and breaking up toddler fights day-after-day. I would like to be appreciated for what I’m good at, and I don’t feel good at this mundane and tedious work! I even have gifts that I’m not attending to use, and I don’t think I’ll feel fulfilled until I do.
And here’s the way in which I’d assess my feelings as they arise:
- What circumstance is causing my restlessness? The life circumstance causing my restlessness is the weariness and mundane everydayness of those little years. I feel like I haven’t any lifetime of my very own.
- What underlying identity or self-worth issues am I battling? I’m believing that my value comes from a paycheck or approval from others.
- According to God’s Word and wisdom, is the treatment for what I want present in myself or in him? In my efforts or in God’s work? My value and value come from what God says about me, not from what I do for him. My identity is in him once I’ve been saved by grace through faith. That means my life shouldn’t be my very own. He created me (as a masterpiece!), and he has a purpose for my life—that I would walk within the grace that saved me. My approval won’t ever come from what others consider me but from what God says about me.
- How can I stop scrambling and begin resting right where I’m? I could be looking out for the way God will use all of the gifts he’s given me, but I can trust that what I’ve been given to do today can also be beneficial and purposeful. The value assigned to how I exploit my giftings shouldn’t be depending on paychecks or approval, so I can select to make use of them now, even in my current context as a mom to young children, right where I’m.
This little exercise in preaching and applying the reality to myself modified my life and carried me through probably the most restless seasons. It exposed the ways through which a few of my restless thoughts were idolatrous and a type of worshiping my very own dreams and aspirations as an alternative of the God who created me with the giftings I desired to make use of. But it also helped me to process what I used to be eager for, and once I selected to place my trust in him again, I learned to be steadfast in my identity in Christ while concurrently using my giftings in ways I wouldn’t have planned for myself.
Remember: God wants your heart greater than he wants your dreams to come back true.
If our hearts are what God is really after, then here’s the paradigm shift that may transform our restlessness at once: feeling restless and unsatisfied is strictly where we have to be to ensure that God to shape us and take us where he wants us to go.
Friend, restlessness shouldn’t be a puzzle for us to unravel on our own; it’s an invite from God to search out answers in him, to press in and discover who he’s and why we will rest in him. It’s all about what he’s doing when you may’t tell that anything extraordinary is occurring in any respect. If you don’t yet have eyes to see it, don’t fret. He’s inviting us to step in only a bit of closer to him every time.
Taken from Now and Not Yet by Ruth Chou Simons. Copyright © 2024 by Ruth Chou Simons. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson. www.thomasnelson.com.
Photo Credit: Thomas Nelson Publishing, used with permission.
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