Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. Matthew 11:28-30

God is gentle but firm.

God enters our inner being with a gentle touch. Our soul finds its rest when it is at peace after it has been cleansed and as it is experiencing a freeing through a holy intervention. God administers healing grace to our inner person. The end result will be noticeable by what is no longer active, what is now absent. The pain, fear, and inner turmoil is leaving or has left. Now we are at peace. How does it happen? I will seek to highlight the way God works in the heart that seeks Him for help and healing.

We find in this passage an active thought. There is a cause and there is an effect. We will find. What do we find?  Rest.  We find “rest unto our souls.” The result of our coming with our heaviness and troubles to God is that we find rest. The “rest” is what He offers to us for joining Him and seeking His help.

This is a spiritual rest. It is a retreat, resuscitation, renewing, and reviving. It is joy. The object of the rest is unto our souls, our inner self, the part that is the center of our being, our real self, not to be confused with God’s Spirit in us.

Getting to the point of rest in our spiritual lives is not automatic. Spiritual rest is often impeded both by present circumstances and by past experiences. It is necessary to come to God with open hearts. First we must recognize this truth about ourselves. We must identify our issues which compete for dominance as part of the human condition that needs the divine touch of God. Full rest in God comes over increments of time as we draw closer to Him in boundless love.

Our intrinsic need to be loved and wanted is found in God. Reciprocal love is found in human love but not in full measure. People try to meet this unfulfilled desire and inner want through their relationships, possessions, obsessions, addictions, and achievements. They may try to find that one person, the boyfriend, the mate, the child, the parent, the friend, the perfect job or boss, to satisfy this inner need to be loved or to find someone to be their all-in-all. Humans are made to desire love and to desire significance. However, what a human has to offer us is limited.

No person can completely meet this need for love. It is God who can and will meet our greatest need to be loved. God is love. He is bounteous love. His love has no limits. God’s love is beyond our scope of imaginings.

There are exceptional loves in this world, but they too will fall short in the end. Human love is very special. It blesses us. But it does have a limit. We all want to be deeply loved. I desire it. Yet, I know as sure as I am writing this that only God can meet this deepest longing in the human heart.

I wish it were easier to recognize God’s love for us. I think children are more spontaneous and aware of Him in a natural way than an adult with our bent toward cognitive parameters. First, we have to find God as real. It is not easy to find Him, especially as our all-in-all. Why is this? Possibly, because we are too busy living our lives the way we think is right and good and haven’t stopped to be still.

Steps Forward in a Spiritual Intervention:

1. We open up to God, confess our sins, ask Him to show us our areas of sin.
2. We tell God we need His help for a spiritual cleansing of our present and past stuff.
3. We ask Him to reveal our unhealed hurts, unmet needs, and unresolved issues.
4. We let ourselves face these past issues by praying to God as we give them to Him. 
5. We ask God to show us where we have been wrong in our attitudes. 
6. We ask God to show us the better way, His way to deal with our life. 
7. We begin to listen actively and pray deeply without an agenda or list.
   
8. We don’t stop seeking until we begin finding.
9. We surrender ourselves to God and say we desire to know Him better, in close interactive relationship.
   
10. We praise God and thank Him for His love, forgiveness, healing, and closeness.

We must be honest with God and allow Him to help cleanse and restore us to new life.  We must let go of the fear. We must let go of the rigid control. We must allow ourselves to become vulnerable before God. If He shows us that we have some vulnerabilities, it may take an act of God to help us in a new way.

It is a freeing experience to open the fractures in our hearts as we release our tight hold on our own issues so that we can let God in to possess our neediness and anoint our interior places with His divine ointment of healing grace. His salve is warm and restorative. It is okay to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, angry again as we remember what we have tried so hard to forget. In fact, it is essential to our healing and restoring. Hiding is binding. The opposite is needed.

In some ways, this is hard work. Do not be discouraged. It took many years for the areas of bondage to build in you, and it will take time to address and embrace your healing and freedom. God cares about you and wishes for you to find your hope in him. Those who are already “there” or close to it, need to say a few words of encouragement to those who are in the middle of the battleground. Prayer helps, too.

If you think you don’t need a spiritual intervention, then you are mistaken. We all need to allow God access to do what He can and will do. Just ask Him, and you’ll see. God reveals to us what we need to work on at the time, but the gate must be open, not shut.

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©N. L. Brumbaugh

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