Hearts at Rest

It's 1130 at night and I really should be asleep.  I missed my quiet time this morning because the snooze button on my phone just kept hitting itself... but at least I am physically in the bed.

There's nothing like being in the bed at night.  Or in the morning, for that matter.  I have to confess, I'm kind of in love with my bed.  And that's ok... until it gets to be more than my love for God.

In fact, it's okay to love a lot of things, but they become wrong when we put them in front of God.  And don't we do that often?

A word has been coming to my mind lately... two words, actually. Earlier this week, I wrote about the condition of the heart, and how God is into heart surgery.  I've really been thinking a lot about my heart, as I finish up What Happens When Women Say Yes to God and begin to look ahead to A Confident Heart.

Don't we all want a confident heart? And don't we all want a heart willing to say yes, to respond without hesitation?

I have good intentions with that... just like I have good intentions with getting up in the morning to do my quiet time.  Which I don't do if I stay up too late reading my financial management book or playing Candy Crush or losing myself in whatever novel I am reading. 

My good intentions go out the window when I don't get enough rest...and the snooze button just keeps going off, every nine minutes, until I roll out of bed in just enough time to get Caleb to school right before the bell rings.

This word, rest, seems to go along with heart... because our heart is reflective of what we really are, and let's face it, when we go without rest, our heart sometimes gets dingy.  Tonight in Bible study, we were talking about Heaven, the land of eternal rest... and that word just kept coming up again and again. 

Rest from our labors.  Rest in peace.  An eternal rest.

Over 300 times is the word rest found in the Bible (I did a word search on www.biblegateway.com, using the NLT translation).  Most of the time, it means a word that I need.  To rest.. stop, pause, refresh, rejuvenate... and the other times, it means a remainder.  And what hit me as I looked over those verses... we can't have the remainder, the rest of what God has to offer us, if we can't learn to rest, to pause.

Our hearts can't fully get the rest of His promises if we don't pause to appreciate what we have.
Our hearts can't understand the rest (completion) of His love if we are constantly going 100 miles an hour.

Just as we physically need rest, our hearts need rest.  We need to pause in the middle of whatever emotional endeavor we are undergoing and bask in Him. 

Hearts at rest, knowing that He is in control, and His grace is sufficient.