Thursday, February 26, 2009

Delicious Rest

I was reading Psalm 5 in my NIV Devotional Bible and ran across this. This is part of the devotional and below the actual scripture. It really spoke to me tonight, so I thought I would share it.

Have you felt the delicious sense of rest upon going to bed at night? How delightful was the sensation of relaxing every muscle and letting you body go in a perfect abandonment of ease and comfort. The strain of the day had ceased, for a few hours at least. You no longer had to hold up an aching head or a weary back. You trusted yourself to the bed in an absolute confidence and it held you up without effort or strain. You rested!

But suppose you had doubted the strength or the stability of your bed, and had dreaded each moment to find it giving way beneath you. Could you have rested then? Would not every muscle have been strained in a fruitless effort to hold yourself up, and would not the weariness have been greater than if you had not gone to bed at all?

Let this analogy teach you what it means to rest in the Lord. Let you souls lie down upon the couch of his will. Relax every strain, and lay off every burden. Let yourself go in a perfect abandonment of ease and comfort, sure that, since he holds you up, you are perfectly safe. Your part is simply to rest. His part is to sustain you; and he cannot fail.

Suggested reading- Psalm 62:1-2
Isaiah 62: 3-4
Psalm 91:1