ME-ssentials – too TIRED – Day Twenty-Nine
ESSENTIALS for Me NOT to Be: too TIRED
September 29th, 2021
What’s your ESSENTIAL?
Essential: absolutely necessary; indispensable; the essence of a thing; inherent and intrinsic, vital
Just as there are so many ESSENTIALS for me to be, there are just as many ESSENTIALS for me NOT to be. Let’s explore those the other half of this month!
Matthew 11:28-30, ‘”Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to Me. Get away with Me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with Me and work with Me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with Me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”’ (MSG)
“I’m too tired,” she said. “I have nothing. Left. To. Give.” She was ravaged by life. A hand-me-down. Had been tossed from one life scrimmage to the next man’s hands to the beckoning drug calling out her name to the inevitable bleating from her children and blocking out their cries back to life’s battlefields when she’d find her way home. Until it began all over again. She had been desperate for a long time, but only recently had she given it a name. “too Tired,” she said, “I’m just plain too tired to fight anymore.”
It’s an oxymoron, really. Too tired got her here but too tired is where she, and you and I, need to be to succumb to help. It’s essential for us not to give up, to not become too weary and fatigued to care; to stay in the fight, to chase after Jesus as He relentlessly pursues after our hearts. But once we get to the place where we are overcome with exhaustion—and not just the physical exertion that causes you to sleep without moving a muscle—I’m talking about the emotional fatigue that makes you want to crawl in a hole and hibernate for an entire season or three—that ‘tired’. When we get there, then He really can go to work. When we can work no longer, then He will take over. He can then work behind the scenes, on scripts you never imagined, backdrops, props, all the things we never think of, even though we have been playacting on life’s stage all along.
I murmured, “Shhh. It’s okay. Sleep now. You’re safe. Just rest. I got you. He’s got you. Shhh.” Pretty soon her snores matched her twitches as she fell into a sleep that only those so weary by life can find when they reach safety. I watched the rise and fall of her chest, traced hearts and crosses on her back as I listened to her sleep. Too tired. Life can do that to you. But He can restore all the enemy has stolen and make us brand new. Revive us; that’s what He does, breathes life into our tired lungs once more.
Psalm 55:22, ‘So here’s what I’ve learned through it all: Leave all your cares and anxieties at the feet of the Lord, and measureless grace will strengthen you.’ (TPT)
