Resting

Lord  have mercy….I just need to share with y’all  a little something about sleep. You really don’t appreciate the fact that you sleep until something goes drastically wrong with it. I used to laugh at the older folks when they complained about aches or pains, summing them up with the statement of “I must have slept wrong…” Me, being young and naïve,  thinking….how can you sleep wrong. Oh, but today children, let me tell you about sleeping wrong….I know a little something about it now that I have lived some years.

When the old folks talked about sleeping wrong they meant in an awkward physical position….when I’m talking about sleeping wrong, I’m talking about your awkward physical position got you in an even more awkward spiritual position…ya feel me?  I want to talk about getting back in right standing to sleep in that sweet rest that only God can provide.

Now, the word says He grants rest to those He loves (Psalm 127:2) … Keep in mind that if we say we love God there is a byproduct of that love and it is obedience. He loves all of us but there is a different level and connection and intimacy when we live move and have our being in Him.

Matthew 11:28-30 New International Version (NIV)

28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 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. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Pay close attention to the word burdened…and the ask yourselves what are my burdens? What kind of work am I doing? What is my motivation for doing the work?

Have you ever considered maybe the work ain’t for you? Have you done a fearless and moral searching inventory and found that your motives are not on the up and up? We have all been found guilty of it from time to time…

I have been having difficulty sleeping for about 3 weeks now and for the first few hours of it I was vexed and perplexed and I even allowed the thing that jolted my sleep to really irritate me to the brink of medical intervention… but then I remembered to tell the mountain about my God….and my vision on the whole thing changed.

I can praise in the problem, I am blessed in the mess and that very same mess is my message; I am living a passage of scripture;

Isaiah 40:28-31 New International Version (NIV)

28 Do you not know?
    Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

I am reminded of an old message I heard preached about “protocol”….

I couldn’t get with the protocol because I forgot to call on God! Amen That same God who is a very present help….

I allowed my self (flesh), my ego to say “I got this”  and I got served…

I was that chick in the horror movie that goes to see why the lights were out and I got served….

Oh the enemy takes on many forms my distraction was dressed up as sleep…now had I allowed myself to sleep or taken something to sleep I would have missed out on the opportunity to receive this message and to give God praise…

Now I fully receive the message that my rest in in the Lord and  like the song goes….I ain’t no ways tired Amen!