Why you’ll never be happy and won’t find rest!

This last weekend I talked about how God has commanded those of us who believe and follow him to simply rest. That rest begins with our ability to trust that He is in fact in control and that it’s not all about us or up to us. You see when we believe it is either about or up to us we can never truly rest and we will never be happy, because if we stop we loose. If we rest we miss opportunities. If we fall short it’s because we didn’t try hard enough, so we need to try harder next time, work longer, push farther…you get the picture.

Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted.
Unless the Lord protects a city, guarding it with sentries will do no good.
It is useless for you to work so hard from early morning until late at night, anxiously working for food to eat; for God gives rest to his loved ones. – Ps 127:1-2

I believe that the key to finding happiness and being able to rest begins with confronting 3 lies that we tell ourselves that are represented in the above passage. The first lie goes something like this, “I can do this!”. This sounds great doesn’t it, self confidence, self reliance, oh the joys of the self help book! Here’s the problem though, in a very real and all encompassing sense you can’t do this. You and I are hopelessly ill equipped to conquer life, or for that matter just navigate it without massive tragedy. The primary reason is that the vast majority of the things in your life are beyond your control. Until you realize that without God you can’t do squat, you’ll never find rest and never experience genuine happiness.

The second lie is a small variation of the first, “I have enough or I know enough to do this”. The problem here is that we are assuming that we know what is actually needed to accomplish the task. In the verse the author refers to guarding a city, inferring that someone was coming to attack it. But, there is the unknown, how many, how strong, when will they attack, what war machines do they have. All these questions are unknowable, and when we think we’ve got it we end up moving forward unprepared and end up unsuccessful. Until we admit that we can’t possibly know enough, we won’t be able to rest or be truly happy.

The final lie is like one of those horrible children’s songs that just repeats itself over and over. You know, “This is the song that never ends…” I cringe just hearing that begin in my head. But that’s exactly what we are doing when we buy into the lie, “I just need to work harder!” The bottom line is, there are some things that no matter how hard you try you’ll never be able to accomplish, no matter how smart you are, how wonderful of a strategy you espouse, how many hours you work, it just isn’t going to happen. That can sound very defeating and deflating, but realizing that the end results aren’t all up to you can actually be an incredibly liberating thing that, well, opens up the door for you to rest and rediscover happiness.

Take a breath this week and confront the lies that steal the rest you need and the happiness God desires!

Dave