More Than a Rolling Stop (Ps. 25; James 4:4)

Rest is a lack of motion

In the body this looks like a stopping, a ceasing from any kind of physical action; in the mind this looks like an absence of mental exertion or gymnastics. 

No disruption. No agitation. 

Ironically, reading this post about rest will temporarily cause you to suspend resting either your mind or your body—limited as the physical motion of scrolling upward with your index finger may be and the focusing of your eyes on the text and their moving left to right and downward to follow it—because reading this post requires movement, limited in physical and mental exertion as it may be. 

Take a minute and really think about the last time you truly rested intentionally that was not just a collapsing of your body in sleep due to exhaustion. Sobering, isn't it?

No noise. No distractions. No exertion. Nothing. 

More than likely, you haven’t experienced too awful much of that in this busy, loud world in which we pass through on our way to another better place that is promised us only in Christ. 

I noticed the other night during an almost four-hour power outage before bed time just how quiet the quietness of nothing can be. It was not until all of the noise was removed that I heard it and noticed how still we suddenly became on a normally active Friday evening. In the total absence of man-made light, even the stars shone brightly as I walked the dog in the dark quietness. 

The difference of a world at rest

Likewise, I see the world differently with a mind at rest. I am changed by my exposure to the rest that can only be found in God. As today, as I read Psalm 25 again, I find myself stuck on the first two lines:

To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.

O my God, in you I trust.

I have to stop and ask myself in light of recent reading and studying and a sermon series my husband completed yesterday just what I have been lifting up my soul to, if indeed I have stopped my motion long enough to truly do any lifting. If I am honest, my lifting is not always to the Lord, and I rely too much on my physical and mental strength to keep going. Sometimes it is selfish and focused on me—what I want, need, desire, crave. Sometimes it is rushed—a rolling stop at the morning stop sign of "devotion" or reading, a checking off, a cursory conversation. Sometimes it is just unnoticed. I am doing my normal reading and get in more of a routine than daily communion with God.

Rolling Stops

I remember as a sixteen-year-old being warned about a particular stop sign at the bottom of a hill leaving the mountain on which I lived, and honestly I still think of it each time I pass through on my way to visit my parents. The police haunted that particular four-way stop for years and were known to sit just out of sight lines and direct their powerful flashlights toward the front wheels of cars to see if they truly stopped. If the driver stopped, they had the after-shock of seeing the police car as they pulled through the intersection and sighed in relief. However, if they rolled through the sign, they received a ticket for their failure to fully stop. 

Sometimes, I think we forget the incomprehensible knowledge and understanding of the God we claim to love and serve and we just roll through instead of stopping and lifting up our souls to Him and then remaining there for any length of time. He knows our hearts intimately and knows when we just go through the motions of lifting our devotions instead of bringing our hearts and minds to rest before Him, trusting Him to do the work in us that only He can do. 

The lifting up spoken of here by David in verse one is an intense longing, a directing of desire  with every single atom of a being focused on and raised to the One true God. The definition offered by Webster’s 1828 when I looked at trust in the second line when combined with the first line about lifting up my soul to God convicted me, caused me to stop instead of rolling on through. Do I simply look to the God I say I follow and serve when I have a “need”  or see something headed at me that I obviously can't "handle" alone, or do I truly long for Him like nothing else with every single part of me in every given circumstance? Do I desire the rush and busy and hurry of a world going blurrily by as I blend in with everyone and everything else here? 

consistently reliant on Christ alone

I want to be able to say every single second that I recognize and live like He is enough because He is. I want to long for Him more than I long for anything else, but in my sojourn here, I often falter when I see greener-looking pastures peeking out at me after a long winter, sometimes even wandering off a bit into danger before He uses his rod and staff to correct my direction and then gently lead me back to rest in His pastures where He guards my heart and my mind in Christ Jesus.

I understand with my mind the Scripture that tells me that loving the world, being its friend, causes enmity with God (James 4:4). But I often struggle to understand that concept with my soul, with every crevice of every molecule within me. I think that I have snatches and glimpses of lifting my soul up to Him that have become much more regular as I have grown in His grace, but I am easily distracted and require much to focus. What I do know with everything in me is that I want to understand better what it means to lift up my soul to my Savior, and I know with everything in me that He will help me as I look to Him.

Investigating Trust

The second line above from Psalm 25 speaks of trust. Interestingly enough, when this word is investigated, it speaks of a resting of the mind on God’s steadfast qualities and principals. This is where I got stuck this morning. As I lift up my soul to God, He becomes my sole focus, the focus of my soul, but only when I am still, at rest, dwelling on His steadfast love, His redeeming mercy, His outright grace, His eternal nature, His uncontested power, His overwhelming might, His unparalleled holiness, His long-suffering nature, His costly decision to walk in the shoes of His own creation and give Himself for the sin that held them captive, His resurrection power, His sovereign ability to not only save but keep and preserve His own. The more I focus on Him, the more He becomes my focus. Focusing on the world won't bring Him into better clarity, which should be obvious, yet don't we sometimes operate on the premise that "He knows I am busy doing X, Y, or Z, so He will just magically hold me up with what I don't know"? When the reality is that He has already given me everything I need, "for His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence" (2 Pet. 1:3). Yet here I am ignoring the true knowledge of Him found in the Word because I am busy in the frantic moments of this temporal life. But yeah . . . "Somehow it will all work together for good for me!" becomes the "promise" we all love to claim when we just don't have time for the truth found in His Word.

There is much to dwell upon. 

The Word He so generously gives to ruminate upon (yes, husband, I was listening yesterday . . . ), I must constantly feed upon as I rest, as I wait, as I take refuge in Him. 

Truly, who runs into a refuge to hide from danger and then immediately runs right back out into the danger he/she has just sought to escape? Rather, to rest I must cease my motion in withdrawing regularly from the world instead of being sucked into its vortex, and I must wait (that requires an object not being in motion, too) as He works in me while I rest in Him. Life in Christ requires much more than mere rolling stops in the Word.