Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Matthew 11:28-30 ESV
Our culture doesn’t value rest the way God values rest. Our world values accomplishments and a busy schedule over rest. There are so many things we want to accomplish in any given week that we can often feel overwhelmed when we look at our packed schedules, much less when we try to move through it. We have responsibilities from our jobs that spill over into our free time, our children need to participate in sports or dance or some other activity, they also need to have a well-rounded social life so we need to arrange playdates or social time, and then there is the homework, which has only been amplified in recent weeks. Many of us also have aging parents that need to be tended to, and don’t forget we need to get the house cleaned and dinner on the table. It can be overwhelming just thinking about it. It’s no wonder our marriages get pushed to the bottom of our list of priorities.
Work is a good thing—God calls us to work for Him. From the very beginning (Genesis 2:15), God created us to work. He even wants us to work with all our might (Ecclesiastes 9:10), and Proverbs is full of warnings against laziness (Proverbs 10:4). Sadly, sin has corrupted work as many of us have made work a priority over the other things God calls us to do. Many worship work or the accomplishments we achieve through our work and make those the focus of our lives. This reality is just as true for the one who works for an employer as it is for the one who’s primary work is keeping the household running. We find value in our work, or we find value in what other people think of our work, so we continue to add more to our schedule.
We forget that God also calls us to rest in Scripture. In fact, He designed and instructed us to rest in the very creation of the world. God didn’t rest on the seventh day because He needed a break, God rested on the seventh day to show us the importance of incorporating a rhythm of rest into our schedules. He goes so far as to promise blessings if we observe rest (Deuteronomy 15:4-6) and curses if we do not (Deuteronomy 28:15). God knows how important this rest is to our bodies, yet many of us still experience the physical problems of being over-scheduled and over-worked. Despite the fact that we experience the curses, we continue to push through our need to rest, and take on more and more responsibilities.
What would it look like in your marriage if you intentionally chose time to rest? What blessings would come to your lives if you declared a specific time every day to rest in Him? What would it look like to declare a specific day every week to rest in Him? What if we chose the blessings of rest in our marriage? Choose to say no where the world demands you say yes, and give God the opportunity to pour our His blessings onto your marriage by taking the time to rest in Him together.
Press on ~ you are loved 💗
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