Praying To Find And Experience Rest Each Day

 Here we are in the final days of August for this summer of 2021.  Summer is meant to be a time of relaxation and rest. A time to get out and about with family and friends in the out-of-doors and enjoy nature along with good times with loved ones.  it's a time for rest, isn't it?

Not just in the summer but in all seasons it is God's heart that we would know and enter into rest.  Remember Jesus' invitation:

Are you weary, carrying a heavy burden? Come to me. I will refresh your life, for I am your oasis. Simply join your life with mine. Learn my ways and you’ll discover that I’m gentle, humble, easy to please. You will find refreshment and rest in me. For all that I require of you will be pleasant and easy to bear.”  Matthew 11:28-30

Loving God, we want to respond to Your invitation today to come to You for rest and refreshing.  Help us today to stay joined to You and learn Your ways of doing our daily life.  We believe You when You say that You are gentle, humble, and easy to please and that when we walk with You we will find refreshment and rest.

Fill us with faith in Your goodness and Your closeness to us today so we don't make the mistake that others in the past have.

God’s promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it. For this good news—that God has prepared this rest—has been announced to us just as it was to them. But it did them no good because they didn’t share the faith of those who listened to God. For only we who believe can enter his rest. So let us do our best to enter that rest. But if we disobey God, as the people of Israel did, we will fall. Hebrews 4:1-3, 11

We believe God but help us in every way that we still waver.  We want to be filled with faith that You are everything You say and that the stability and peace that provides us rest is ours today as we throw our lot in with you.  Fill us with this strong and enduring faith, we pray.

And then there is that resting or settling of something on us.  The Bible speaks about God's Spirit resting on us in amazing ways, empowering us with all God's character and goodness.  We will use those words to invite God to rest on us again today:

The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—and he will delight in the fear of the Lord.

He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. Isaiah 11:2-4

Let’s have a great day of rest and of letting the Spirit of God rest on us.