You can try to rest or you can rest from trying. If resting is the ceasing of activity then you cannot “try” to rest. You can only receive rest.

At the root of true rest is the God who created all things, and continues to sustain all things He has created. An important component to our resting, then, is trusting.

We can rest when we trust in God who sustains all things by the word of His power and who works all things together for our eternal good. We can rest when we trust that God is doing the work, His work – for us, in us and through us – even when we are not working. Perhaps, especially when we are not working. Maybe He would even do more if we did less! If we did less work in our own strength and found more rest in His strength.

There’s this inextricable tension that exists in the place of our obedience to God. Where we are given work to do according to our abilities and yet at the same time are called to work beyond our abilities in the ability of Christ.

And therein is the “secret”. Work with all of your strength, but then work beyond your strength in the strength that Christ supplies. And the strength that Christ supplies is only available when we rest from our work. When we cease believing that our work and Christ’s work are the same kind of work. When we cease to believe that the work of Christ actually depends upon our work and not the other way around.

There’s a point nearly every day when I consciously with confession of my mouth cease my work as a pastor for the day. I walk away from my work (not just the place of my work) praying, “God, I give you the work of my hands (the people, sermons, meetings, plans, decisions, budgets, teams, dreams,…). I leave my work in your hands. It’s not my church, it’s yours. It doesn’t depend on me but on you. ”

As in life, so in the Kingdom: if you can’t learn to rest, rest will become impossible. And then work will become impossible. Learning to rest in Christ is not about trying to rest. It’s about resting from trying. From trying to achieve a few things or all things, even the best kind of things, as if they depended solely on your strength and effort.

Dear Elim Grace, how do you know you’re learning to rest? You know you’re resting in Christ when both the weight of the world and the world of weight you’ve felt is lifted from you. You no longer try to hold it up by your work and effort. Rather, you cast it all on Jesus.