Cheri's Blog

Refreshment for Your Soul

Refreshment for Your Soul

Podcast #69

Refreshment

Welcome to the podcast! 

Believe me. Living with nine people can cause a person to be intentional about learning how to seek refreshment in all kinds of ways. Maybe you have scheduled an appointment for a pedicure, sat down for a long cup of coffee at your favorite coffee shop, or shut yourself away to spend it curled up watching Christmas movies. You know you want it. And likely you need it because you and I generally try to press our limits. Not only do we do this physically, but we don’t tend to be very calculated about caring for our spiritual lives. Eventually, you and I need some spiritual renewal. In this episode, we discuss the need for refreshment for the soul and what it can look like in your daily life.

Remember, if you are interested in The Show Notes for Refreshment for Your Soul, you can gain access right here.

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Thank you for listening.

Cheri

Resting Well Day 3

Resting Well – Day 3

The Price of NOT Resting

Last summer, my husband took a job in another city for a year. This left me at home with eight kids and more responsibilities than I could handle. You might say, I had too many penguins on the iceberg.

My solution was to spend less time on me. Sleep less. Eat less. Do less of what I needed to give more and be stronger for them. As you can imagine, it was only a matter of time before penguins began flinging off my iceberg.

Not surprisingly, there was a price for neglecting myself.

Neither is it startling to learn Scripture warns us there is a price for NOT resting.

Consider God’s dealings with the Israelites as they settled into the Promised Land. In Joshua 21:43-44 we find God’s people entering His rest, experiencing all God promised them.

Thus the LORD gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And the LORD gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the LORD had given all their enemies into their hands.
Joshua 21:43-44

Later the Psalmist encourages the people of his day to learn from those who were not able to enter because of their unbelief, and to choose differently.

For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your fathers put me to the test and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work. For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people who go astray in their heart, and they have not known my ways.” Therefore I swore in my wrath, “They shall not enter my rest.” Psalm 95:7-11

Isaiah does something similar in his day.

 For by people of strange lips and with a foreign tongue the LORD will speak to this people, to whom he has said, “This is rest; give rest to the weary; and this is repose”; yet they would not hear. And the word of the LORD will be to them precept upon precept, precept upon precept, line upon line, line upon line, here a little, there a little, that they may go, and fall backward, and be broken, and snared, and taken. Isaiah 28:11-13

What does all of this have to do with you and me today?

Hebrews clears the fog by explaining that the promise of entering His rest still stands today (Hebrews 3:7-19). Therefore, the risk of NOT entering it also remains.

Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. Hebrews 3:12

There can be an UNBELIEVING HEART within a Believer that refuses to cleave to, trust in and rely on God.

Can you see how this could be a present reality? We believe God for our purposes in life. But the road to our particular Promised Land is wrought with impossibilities, hardships, difficult people and dysfunctional relationships. It’s easy to lose your footing in the midst of all this malarkey. Who wouldn’t be tempted NOT to cleave, trust in, or rest upon a God who makes promises blurred by all this haze?

Oh– but There is a price of NOT Resting. There are consequences for refusing to believe the God who gives rest to our souls! Constant turmoil. Anxiety and worry. Defeat.

Can we agree that this price is too great?

If this refusal remotely defines the state of your heart, then take the advice found in Psalms 106:6 and 25:11.

Both we and our fathers have sinned; we have committed iniquity; we have done wickedness. Psalm 106:6

For Your name’s sake, O LORD, Pardon my iniquity, for it is great. Psalm 25:11

Ask for forgiveness. Unbelief for the Believer is a sin. NOT resting as a Believer– not cleaving to, relying on, or trusting in Him-– is sin.

Ask, and you will be forgiven.

His rest is too good to miss!

With Much affection, for His Glory!

 

 

Today’s podcast provides a deeper look into the consequences of NOT resting and how to avoid them. Take five minutes and click on the title, “Pitfalls to Avoid.”

 

Resting Well Day 2

Resting Well – Day 2

Rest for Your Burdens

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matthew 11:28

The invitation offered in Matthew 11:28 is generously inclusive. Most of us could admit to laboring at some point. We are invited to bring even our most grievous trouble– the ulcer-causing kind. Those of us who are overwhelmed with responsibility, as well as exhausted are welcome, too. Who isn’t glad Jesus calls us to Himself?

But if you and I were honest, do we really have any practical idea WHAT WE ARE SUPPOSED TO DO with the invitation?

Am I supposed to stop doing everything?

Do I zone out of my burdened life and just quote scripture?

Does it simply mean to stop worrying?

What is Jesus calling us into out of our exhausted states–our situations and worries that are spilling into our functionality?

We need to know because these are the places we live!

Some are working ourselves dizzy.

Some of us truly are taxed emotionally. The loss has been too great this year. The financial issues are too complicated. The relationship drama is ever-present and oppressive. The emotional strains are taking a physical toll.

Or maybe what others genuinely need from you has over-extended you until you have become ill. My dear friend cared for her mother in her final months. The day after she passed away into Glory my friend suffered an illness that land her in the ICU! She had given everything she had until the very end.

Isn’t that like us? You and I have no sense! We often give beyond what is good for us, personally. Therefore, most of us are bone-weary desperate to experience the kind of rest Jesus beckons us into.

This particular rest is a temporary respite from activity, or from service or work. He knows there will be times when we give everything we’ve got to the end. And there is nothing left.

Jesus says, “Come to Me – and I will cause you to rest.”

There are no substitutions. Jesus is the only One who can give us what we need to get back in there. Nothing else will do.

I don’t know what you need. But He does.

You don’t know what I need. But He does.

God knows we need Him to cause us to rest.

For there is work to be done. And we want to be fit to do it.

  1. Tell Him of your need, and
  2. Let Him fill it.

I hope you will take five minutes for today’s podcast, “The Path to Soul Rest.” Just click on the link.

With Much affection, for His Glory!