“Arise, O Lord, and come to your resting place.”
(Psalm 132:8)
What is it you need most from God? Jesus often asked those he encountered, “What is it you want me t or you?” Quite the invitation! The God of the universe lays at our feet his power, might, and benevolence to serve us. What would you say?
Would you say to God, as King David did, “I want you to come to your resting
place”? Perhaps it was David’s own need for rest from his enemies, rest from the warring, from kingdom building and the taming of a wild nation, that led him to ask God to come and rest with him. He might have asked for rest. But instead he offered it. Of all the things God could do for him, the desire of his heart was that the Lord would dwell with him. Surely, this is what made him a man after God’s own online casino heart.(Acts 13:22)For many of us, rest is the most elusive commodity. We are desperate for rest – the promise to cease from the frenzy that we have built as scaffolding around our lives. For others of us, it is our restless pursuit of perfection, our constant clawing to attain something always out of reach. We need rest from pleasing the public – the impersonal persona that controls us and keeps us always off balance, and
tells us we are never enough. Sometimes we just need a rest from the clamor of voices in our head, that keeps us awake at night. If we could just turn it all off for a moment, a hour, a day. Then we could get some rest.What is it we need most from God? Have we offered it to God? What if we did unto God the things we would have him do unto us. If it is love we want, love God. If it is a home we want, make a home for God. If it is intimacy, develop intimacy with God. Or honor, or passion or comfort. Whatever it is we need, we must learn first to offer it to God, and the blessing will be returned in greater measure than we can hold in our hearts. “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.”(Psalm 37:4)
God honored the desire of David’s heart. Although David never built the temple, God dwelt with him, honored him, brought rest from his enemies (2 Samuel 7:11), and through him brought the One who would bring true rest, his Son Jesus Christ. When we seek to honor God, somehow He turns it upside down, and honors us instead.
“Arise O Lord and come to your resting place.” Would that He find a resting place in me and take over this disheveled, ramshackled, flee market-like atmosphere of a temple, my heart. Then, just maybe, He could straighten out the tangled knot of my heartstrings, and I would find rest for my soul. Come Lord, slow down, kick off your shoes and stay a while, and just come dwell with me.
And He says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).