It’s nice to be able to chill.

And I don’t just mean the kind of surface-level relaxation we all tend to reach for—scrolling for a bit, putting on a song, or grabbing something to take the edge off.

I mean that deep, inner chill.

When things suddenly become clear.

It’s almost like a shift that happens—outside of our control, but seemingly as a result of our choices.

In that space, God can reveal something that has always been the case, but we were too busy to see it: We’ve never needed anything other than what we already have. God has always been with us, and for us.

And if God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31)

Rest is no longer something that you have to escape to. It’s something that you carry around with you.

Have you ever experienced a glimpse of this?

What if it was possible to live that way as a lifestyle?

Modern life seems antithetical to it, doesn’t it? At least here in Southern California, we live in a work culture. It’s almost as if, if you are rested, you aren’t doing enough.

We see it as option A (productive) or option B (rest), but with God we have the pleasure of option C: productive rest.

“It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He gives to His beloved sleep.” (Psalm 127:2)

The caveat, though, is that God gives rest on His terms, not ours.

Our terms are an experience of comfort and sense of control. His terms are a heart of obedience, humility and trust.

Through challenging circumstances, it can be difficult.

When it seems like things aren’t working out the way I’d like them to, I quickly get back to trying to control the situation through my own efforts and strategy. This is often stressful because the world never seems to be entirely cooperative with my plans!

And sometimes things just go wrong, and bad things happen for no apparent reason–because, after all, we do live in a fallen world.

It’s hard sometimes to remember that God has promised us He would be with us through every difficulty, not that we would prevent every difficulty from occurring.

Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah were cast into the furnace, and God was with them, and they weren’t burnt. God didn’t prevent them from going into the furnace, God met them in the furnace. (Daniel 3)

God’s ways continue to be counter-intuitive to the world’s ways. This is where supernatural rest and the intervention of God is experienced. The world tells you that conditions have to be right to experience rest. But we can’t control conditions. True, deep, unshakable rest is in surrender to God and trusting His goodness to be at work through all conditions. 

It isn’t a dissociative type of surrender because nothing matters, or because we need to train ourselves to detach from all sense of self—its a recognition that, yes, this is hard, but God is doing something good through this (Romans 8:28), even though I can’t see or understand it at this moment.

His Word is to be trusted more than my thoughts, feelings or the conventional way people would hold the perspective of what’s going on. 

My mind tells me: this is bad. God says: I’m here with you through everything.

The way we see it is the difference between experiencing His rest or experiencing the fruit of our own devices. 

Easier said than lived, right?

There’s a humility aspect that seems inseparable from God’s rest. It’s not a Joel Osteen ear-itching “everything will be blessed” fantasy, it’s a Passion of the Christ sackcloth “life can be hard sometimes, but God is still good” reality.

We go low into God’s rest, not high. 

But the beautiful thing is, the rest that God gives is far greater than the most desirable pleasures that the world has to offer. All of the money, sex, power, etc., cannot compare with the peace, security and knowingness of being deeply loved that come from resting low in Jesus Christ.

It doesn’t make sense without God.

It’s understandably hard to recognize when we see people winning out in sin, or greedily advancing themselves at the expense of others. It seems as if “they are not in trouble as others are; they are not stricken like the rest of mankind,”—it’s like they get all of the pleasure without any of the suffering. At least, that’s what it looks like on the surface, “until I went into the sanctuary of God; then I discerned their end.” (Psalm 73)

There’s not much rest when we are the gods of our own lives.

When we put ourselves first then we are immediately in competition with billions of other people who are doing the same, and we enter this battle as our own protectors and justifiers.

I’m grateful that God is God, so I don’t have to be. I’m grateful to be able to have childlike trust that allows me to leave the bigger things like eternal justice and the orbiting of the stars in His hands. I have enough on my plate with a wife to love, a child to raise, a dog to take care of, a business to operate, clients to serve, a home to maintain, and friendships to sow into.

I’m at rest when I don’t feel as if I have to fight to advance or defend my own interests.

“A laborer is worthy of his wages,” (Luke 10:7) “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9:8)We can afford to be generous instead of covetous with our lives. We can afford to rest.

We can more properly care for the simple and nourishing obligations (privileges, actually) of our lives without the sense that we need more, faster, better, deeper, longer.

There’s rest in aspiring to live quietly, minding our own business, and doing our work, so that we may walk properly among men and be dependent on no one. (1 Thessalonians 4:11-12)

When we try to control what’s beyond our control, or when we have an insatiable appetite, or play the comparison game, then we are building the structure of our lives on the shifting sand (fickle creation) instead of the solid rock (eternally stable Creator). It requires us to effort in ways that we need not be efforting, and to worry about things that we need not be worrying about.

And for what?

“For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.” (1 John 2:16)

“You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.” (James 4:4)

I guess it really comes down to a heart question—what do you choose? God or this world?

When you choose God over this world, truly and sincerely, He gives you rest in this world.

Not Lamborghinis or magical powers.

Circumstances may ostensibly be rough, actually. But you have something the world could never corner nor compare with—the Lord Himself.