The disciple’s rest
“Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
Discipleship begins by coming to Jesus. We have a tendency to concentrate on the cost of discipleship. This is a vital aspect of following Jesus. But it is not where we begin. Discipleship does not start with carrying burdens, but with our burdens being carried. The first thing we learn about Jesus Christ is His ability to carry. Isaiah 53:4 tells us, “He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” The Lord speaks in Luke 15:5-6 about the shepherd laying the sheep on his shoulders and carrying it home. Peter writes “who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). In 1 Peter 5:7 we are invited to cast “all your care upon Him, for He cares for you”. This ministry of care did not stop at our salvation. It is lifelong. One of our greatest difficulties is learning to cast our care upon the Saviour and to rest in Him. It is a verse we love to quote, but rarely fully understand.
The Lord looked into Martha’s heart (Luke 10:41) and said: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things.” The Lord knew it wasn’t just cooking Martha was concerned about. There were many burdens she carried in her heart, and I suspect most of these were burdens of others. How many burdens do we carry for ourselves, our family, our fellowship, our work and our health? The Lord encourages us to bear one another’s burdens. But to do this most effectively we have to learn to have our cares carried by the Saviour. Remember the sense of liberty that rushed into your soul when you trusted Jesus Christ. We found peace with God because the Saviour took our burden of sin and redeemed us. The power of true discipleship is to learn to unburden our souls in His presence and know there is not a weight that bears down upon us that He cannot carry.
When the Lord speaks of finding rest in Him, He is not speaking of inactivity. He is speaking of fulfilment. When Martha’ sister, Mary, sat at the feet of Jesus, it was not in idleness. She was more alive at that moment than she had ever been in her life before. She drank in every word the Lord spoke, and she immediately understood the power of being in the presence of the Saviour.
“Heavy laden” means “heaped upon”. It is in learning to “heap” our care upon the Lord that we discover His rest. In the Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, J. Patrick describes this rest as “not the rest of inactivity but of the harmonious working of all the faculties and affections – of will, heart, imagination, conscience – because each has found in God the ideal sphere for its satisfaction and development.” In other words, “For to me, to live is Christ” (Philippians 1:21).
Discipleship begins by learning to unburden ourselves of all that would hinder us from following the Saviour and from living in the liberty of “the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:2). We experience the peaceful harmony of body, soul, mind and spirit as we follow our Saviour and Lord in true discipleship and respond daily to His simple words, “You Follow Me” (John 21:22).
