Rest (By Faith)

In my walk with God, I've learned that I hear him best through observing patterns in my life that are too blatant to be ignored and coincidences too incredible to be accidental. Looking back on the past few days, I saw that this had happened yet again.

For a very long time, I have found it hard to truly rest. My dad and I were talking about it last night, and I realized that I don't even know of one thing in my life that fully rejuvenates me. I have forgotten, or never understood, the meaning of recreation. That is, re-creation. I need to find ways to be created afresh. The reason I have been unable to is because I put so much pressure on myself to do well in every activity. My stress stems from a desire to be great. That in itself is not necessarily a malign desire, but it is based upon a lack of trust in God and his plan for my life. Faith is putting your trust in someone, and so it is only by faith that I will find rest.

God has been trying to tell me this for the past several days, and undoubtedly beyond that. I have continued my reading of my father's book, and while I have been enjoying it, I realized today that I have not really been paying attention to what it is saying. The messages of the book marry into God's voice, trying to speak to me. God is always thinking about me, I will never be forsaken, I can give God all my worries, God is being good to me in all situations. If I had heeded these messages, I might have understood the way towards peace, but I did not.

I ended up breaking down in the middle of the park, in the middle of vacation, in the middle of break, in the middle of all good things that should lead to joy. As usual, I only saw the truth after hitting rock bottom. Today, I read in my dad's book about Hebrews 11, the chapter which is often entitled "By Faith". I know now that I was right in my thoughts last night about the necessity of trusting God. What's funny is I accidentally skipped a chapter ahead in the book, so I shouldn't have read that till tomorrow. But it's no coincidence that I opened to the wrong page, because it wasn't the wrong page. It was the right page at the right time.