“The
Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He
makes me lie down in green pastures,
he
leads me beside quiet waters, he
refreshes my soul” (Psalm 23:1-3 NIV).
I have done it myself. I have sometimes used the precious words of
Jesus to “Come to me … all who labor and are heavy laden … and I will give you
rest” as the place to come with our anxiety and difficulty. Of course, He is our Shepherd and we need to
go to Him in those overwhelming moments but there is more to our relationship
to Him than just coming to a resting place.
We
rest in His care. We are healed and restored there as well. Still another aspect of coming to Him … is that we
learn of Him when we are comforted by Him. In the actual Scriptural context, we find yet a deeper
meaning. Jesus speaks of “coming to Him”
in response to the burdens of being completely concerned and lost in trying to
follow the religious and pious rules about the Law laid down by the Pharisees
of that age.
One
of heaviest burdens that any of us can carry, is the burden of religious effort
in securing and saving us from our sins.
No amount of righteous acts can accomplish this and no amount of effort
can bring us any closer to a solution for our sin and death problem. We are saved by grace and Jesus is teaching
us that reality in His beckoning invitation to come to Him. In grace our sins are forgiven on the cross
and in grace we find our Living Hope as He rises from the dead and ascends to the Father. As we live out our days … we will at times need to go to
Him to find relief from our frustrated efforts at trying to save ourselves as
well. He is potter and we are the clay.
We need to come to Him again and again and let grace work in our lives as He molds and shapes our lives. For His grace does in a moment, what our all
our efforts cannot do in an eternity. srm
“Come
to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew
11:28 ESV).
No comments:
Post a Comment