I feel restless, frustrated and physically drained. Emotions of anger and aggravation overwhelm me when I sense that I have been rejected by people. I’m so caught up with how I appear to others. What is the cause of this selfishness? Through all this self-centredness I'm hurting the one person who means the most to me. I've been asking God for some answers.
This summer I have been preaching about the character of God and the ultimate pursuit of knowing Him. As I’ve studied in preparation for each Sunday, there is one book that has been a tremendous challenge to me. It was written by A. W. Tozer and is titled, The Pursuit of God. Today I read chapter 9: Meekness and Rest. God reminded me of the root issue and convicted me of the sin that consistently robs me of the peace of God in my life. Tozer says it better than I can:
[T]hese are the evils which make life the bitter struggle it is for all of us. All our heartaches and a great many of our physical ills spring directly out of our sins. Pride, arrogance, resentfulness, evil imaginings, malice, greed are the sources of more human pain than all the diseases that ever afflicted mortal flesh.
Into a world like this the sound of Jesus’ words comes wonderful and strange, a visitation from above. “Come unto me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am meek and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30). Here we have two things standing in contrast to each other, a burden and a rest. . . . Rest is simply release from that burden. It is not something we do; it is what comes to us when we cease to do. His own meekness, that is rest.
Let us examine our burden. It is altogether an interior one. It attacks the heart and mind and reaches the body only from within. First, there is the burden of pride. The labour of self-love is a heavy one indeed. Think to yourself whether much of your sorrow has not arisen from someone speaking slightingly of you. As long as you set yourself up as a little god to which you must be loyal there will be those who will delight to offer affront to your idol. How then can you hope to have inward peace? The heart’s fierce effort to protect itself from every slight, to shield its touchy honour from the bad opinion of friend and enemy, will never let the mind have rest. Continue this fight through the years and the burden will become intolerable. Yet [people] cary this burden continually, challenging every word spoken against them, smarting under each fancied slight, tossing sleepless if another is preferred before them.
Such a burden as this is not necessary to bear. Jesus calls us to his rest, and meekness is his method. The meek man cares not at all who is greater than he, for he has decided that the esteem of the world is not worth the effort. . . . The meek man is not a human mouse afflicted with a sense of his own inferiority. . . . He has stopped being fooled by himself. He has accepted God’s estimate of his own life. He knows he is as weak and helpless as God has declared him to be, but paradoxically, he knows at the same time that he is, in the sight of God, more important than angels. In himself, nothing; in God, everything. That is his motto. He knows well that the world will never see him as God sees him and he has stopped caring. He rests perfectly content to allow God to place his own values. He will be patient to wait for the day when everything will get its own price tag and real worth will come into its own. In the meantime, he will have attained a place of soul rest. As he lives in meekness he will be happy to let God defend him. The old struggle to defend himself is over. He has found the peace that meekness brings.
Then also he will get deliverance from the burden of pretense. [T]his [is] not hypocrisy, but the common human desire to put the best foot forward and hide from the world our real inward poverty. For sin has played many evil tricks on us, and one has been the infusing into us of a false sense of shame. There is hardly a man or woman who dares to be what he or she is without doctoring up the impression. The fear of being found out gnaws like rodents within their hearts.
Let no one smile this off. These burdens are real, and little by little they kill the victims of this evil and unnatural way of life. To all the victims of the gnawing disease Jesus says, “You must become like little children.” For little children do not compare; they receive direct enjoyment from what they have without relating it to something else or someone else. Only as they get older and sin begins to stir within their hearts do jealousy and envy appear. Then they are unable to enjoy what they have if someone else has something larger or better.
Another source of burden is artificiality. I am sure that most people live in secret fear that some day they will be careless and by chance an enemy or friend will be allowed to peep into their poor, empty souls. So they are never relaxed. . . Artificiality is one curse that will drop away the moment we kneel at Jesus’ feet and surrender ourselves to his meekness. Then we will not care what people think of us so long as God is pleased. Then what we are will be everything; what we appear will take its place far down the scale of interest for us.
The heart of the world is breaking under this load of pride and pretense. There is no release from our burden apart from the meekness of Christ. Good, keen reasoning will help slightly, but so strong is this vice that if we push it down one place, it will come up somewhere else. To men and women everywhere Jesus says, “Come unto me, and I will give you rest.” The rest he offers is the rest of meekness, the blessed relief which comes when we accept ourselves for what we are and cease to pretend. God’s grace will come as we learn that we are sharing this new and easy yoke with the strong Son of God himself. He calls it “my yoke,” and he walks at one end, while we walk at the other.
Lord, make me childlike. Deliver me from the urge to compete with another for place or prestige or position. I want to be simple and artless as a little child. Deliver me from posing and pretending. Forgive me for thinking of myself. Help me to forget myself and find my true peace in beholding you. Lay upon my soul your easy yoke of self-forgetfulness that by it I may find rest. Amen.
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