A Prayer for When You Really feel Restless – Your Everyday Prayer – September 23

A Prayer for When You Really feel Restless
By Molly Regulation

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you relaxation.” – Matthew 11:28, ESV

The vacation weekend exclusively created for relaxation has appear and long gone, but how quite a few of us can say we took Labor Day weekend to essentially rest? Most of us in all probability wished to optimize a totally free day off and took our families on getaway, completed domestic chores, or ran errands all around city.

This is not surprising — for we dwell in a tradition that values productivity and instills in us that to “rise and grind” will make us deserving and productive. So, on times that are offered to us as relaxation, we are then forced to use for activities that could not be satisfied in the course of the get the job done 7 days. 

God foresaw humanity’s need to have for relaxation. It was God who modeled for us what healthful, innovative, and effective work looked like. Soon after 6 times of development, he gave us relaxation. Genesis 2:2-3 tells us, “By the seventh working day God experienced finished the perform he experienced been executing so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh working day and made it holy, for the reason that on it he rested from all the perform of generating that he had accomplished.”

Even so, with the Tumble of Person, even sin tried using to destroy the cloth of God’s produced get the job done and relaxation. The earth attempts to inform us that except if we are developing, we are worthless. This can be noticed not only by our day-to-day positions but by means of social media — exactly where even in our no cost time, striving to become an influencer to be viewed has become get the job done. 

This, in convert, leads to restlessness. And this is something I personally wrestle with, and I envision so numerous other folks do as properly. In times when I have the time and room to relaxation, I locate myself turning into pretty anxious. I am not able or unwilling to relaxation. Feelings of guilt, disgrace, or even boredom about not executing some thing prevail over me, and I generally pick to be productive when I actually need to relaxation. 

Not amazingly, when I do not just take these alternatives to relaxation and thrust myself past what is wholesome, my entire body will force me to rest — by disease or melancholy. Even nevertheless I get rest this way, it is considerably from fulfilling. Just as God delighted in his get the job done, and his reason for us was to come across our work gratifying, I believe he also established relaxation to be fulfilling. 

When the thoughts of guilt or shame commence to creep from the edges of my instances of rest, I breathe in and out: I grab my Bible and allow for myself to enter God’s relaxation I seize a reserve and sit in a cozy chair to go through I select up the remote and flip on a motion picture that I delight in and relaxes my full staying. From time to time, I curl up on the sofa and just take a effectively-earned nap. 

Let’s Pray:

Lord, I pray we can give ourselves authorization to relaxation. And when we do, I pray it is with you whom we choose to rest. I pray that we discover peace in your words and voice as we enter into a point out of rest that only you can provide.

Thank you for building a time for function and productiveness, and thank you for building a holy time for rest so that we can be refreshed and start anew. Thank you for offering us passion, travel, and reason. Thank you for the guarantee of one particular day remaining in your existence and feeling that sense of relaxation for all time.

Father, I pray for those people who can’t obtain time for relaxation. For people whose economic and social condition has them performing two or more positions, night shifts, 80-hour weeks just to continue to be higher than water. I pray that you will give them relief — that the neighborhood all over them will step in and support. I pray we, as Christians, remember our charitable spirits and lend a hand to those people in will need. 

Thank you for your great gift of rest, my God. Enable us not listen to the entire world and its definition of price, remembering complete effectively our identification is in Christ alone. As the environment spreads its message of truly worth, permit us spread the gospel message — a concept complete of hope, peace, and the finest like the earth has at any time identified.

In Our Savior’s holy name, Amen.

Photograph credit history: ©SalemDesign/BethanyPyle