Rest For Your Soul

Have you ever just had an overwhelming sense of nostalgia? Nostalgia is defined as “a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations.” Sometimes the pressures, worries, and cares of life have a tendency to cause us to want to reminisce about the “good old days”….the days when we were young and carefree. And we become very nostalgic.

I’ve been there. It usually begins with thoughts such as these: There’s not enough money to pay the house payment, my son is sick for the third time this month, and the washer just blew up. It is just easier on my mind and emotions to think about when times were much simpler. It is easier to run back in time and remember the carefree days of my youth, than it is to stand and face the grown up problems I am experiencing now. But that is not God’s best. His best is that our lives would go from glory to glory to glory. He has plans for us….plans to prosper us and to give us a great future. So how do we do that when we feel like we are about to buckle under the pressure of it all?

Psalm 62:5-8 says, “Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.”

Here we find David, a man who sought to please the Lord and who loved Him, commanding his soul (his mind, will, and emotions) to find rest in God. He reminds himself that God is his rock, his salvation, and his fortress and that his hope is from Him. When pressures come, and they will, we must command our minds, wills, and emotions to find our rest in God and His loving care for us. To take on the care of our problems will only cause us to focus inward and will cripple us from recognizing others’ needs. God cares for us, and we need to trust that He does. When our souls are at rest in Him, we will find ourselves peering less and less into the past and looking ahead to the bright and glorious future He has in store for us.