Whispers of Rest: 40 Days of God's Love to Revitalise Your Soul

A good friend has been challenging me lately... okay, for the last few years, to do something difficult. "Put yourself equal," she says.  Basically, give yourself the same priority as you give others.  In a world of constant moving and everything to do, stopping for the sake of yourself is considered a frivolous notion.  To many Christians it feels downright vain.  What Bonnie Gray is challenging us to do in this new release, Whispers of Rest, is to approach rest with a healthy perspective and she gives practical exercises to help.  It's not the humanistic (verging on narcissistic) "me time" movement some may think.  It's not about making yourself the center of the universe.  This book is rather a beautiful journey of taking time to discover who you really are in the presence of a loving God.

Called a "devotional detox," this 40-day exploration is all about creating space for your soul to breathe, and dare I say, heal.  Each day follows a pattern of reading, reflecting, and a time to pray and rest.  Although she shares a bit of her own story with each passing day, the focus is really on what God is saying through His Word and through taking time to just be with Him.  She challenges us with scripture that inspires application.  Her call to reflect has questions with the remaining page left with enough whitespace to jot down your own answers if you want.  Even if you like to keep a pristine book instead, this space provides a visual prompt to stop and really consider your answers before moving on.  For those that struggle to know how to pray, Gray provides help that correlates with the day's focus, while leaving room for you to speak your heart to God.

It is surprising how challenging this journey is, but Gray leads the way with ease.  God has gifted her with this message of rest and I suspect anyone who takes this 40-day journey seriously will find it to just the beginning.

Finding Spiritual Whitespace: Awakening Your Soul to Rest

"By redefining quiet, God is showing me He can transform my loneliest and messiest moments into the most beautiful and intimate experiences with Him."

What started out as simply a journey to fulfill a life's dream and inspire others turned into a journey that would change her life.  When Bonnie Gray of FaithBarista started writing her new book, uncovered memories began wreaking havoc and she found herself in the throes of PTSD.  Through this, she began writing the deeper story.  Full of raw emotion and vulnerability, Spiritual Whitespace shares insight on finding rest with God, and ultimately our identity in Him.

Bonnie doesn't hold back as she shares glimpses of her past, each significant in forming conclusions that would shape her perceptions of herself and the world around her.  But this book is not simply a collection of memories, it is a journey with destination. It is about transformation with all its messy attributes exposed, laid out on the page... in ink.  It is a brave, daring move that has purpose.

Even as we listen to the message through Bonnie's own story, we hear echoes of our own. While our stories may be different, one doesn't need to have suffered the same trauma to have believed the some of the same lies formed from our own broken experiences.

She shares the heart of Christ as she finds answers in scripture to the questions that arise, challenging the conclusions previously drawn in pain.  She shares her encounters with Christ, but then engages her reader to do the same. After all, reading about resting in Him isn't the same as resting in Him.  She gives prompts for exploring this practically in life.

All this she does with seemingly effortless style.  Even as she pens the trauma, there is a steadiness and calm that is neither restraint nor control.  It is rest.

This book is one to be poured over slowly.  It isn't a mere inspirational read, although it is inspirational.  It is rather an invitation to participate in a journey of hope and healing with God.

To read more by Bonnie or to see what others are saying, check out 

Faith Barista - because some days you need a double shot of faith.

Space to Breathe

I've been more faithful at checking my mailbox than usual lately.  Bonnie at Faith Barista is launching her new book Finding Spiritual Whitespace and I'm patiently awaiting its arrival.

This longing for a space to rest is an innate part of who we are.  Our souls cries out for it, desperate, as somewhere along the line we believed a lie that told us it was selfish, proud, or even lazy to step into this space.  We fell for the lie that in doing so, we would be pulling away from those who needed us, when really we would be pulling into the One we need most.

For too long, we Christians have felt obliged to carry the very burdens we tell others that Christ has already carried on the cross.  We have laboured to deserve our place in Him when we have told others how His grace is freely given.

In doing so, we neglect the natural order with which He created us:

   

We do not rest because we have done;  

We can do because we have rested. 

I look forward to reading how God brought my friend into a place of rest, where she could find healing, hope and the fruition of dreams.  So this week, as I take some rest in order to let God shape  the words that have been stewing inside of me before I attempt serving them up in a post...

I give you this post written on this very topic of rest for Bonnie's Faith Jam some years back.

I hope you will take some time to explore what God said about rest "In the Beginning..." with me.

I'd love to hear back from you in the comments or on Twitter.  Let's make space together.

I'm linked up today with Bonnie and others at Faith Barista because sometimes you need a double shot of faith.

A Clean Space

I hate washing dishes.  I mean, there aren't many people who really like washing dishes, unless you are like my friend Olivia.  Olivia shared the apartment with me for almost two years.  She loves to clean, so much so we would all joke about it.  She also liked to wake up really early, so by the time I woke up and stumbled to the kitchen, the dishes were done, masterfully stacked like some magical tower in the drying rack.  I never knew which dish to take first to put away, with one false move sending the whole lot crashing down onto the counter.  But Olivia has since moved away.

In the States where hot water is constant, one can just wash dishes as they use them, although I never did.  I am one of those people who lets the dishes accumulate a small bit before washing the lot.  Here, we have to turn the hot water tank on just before we want the hot water, so we have to be more intentional about how we use that energy.  This suits me fine and gives me an excuse to leave the dishes for a couple days before the soapy attack.  I am only one person though so it isn't like I have loads to do anyway.

Sitting on the couch, the notion of getting up to do the dishes seems horrible, but my kitchen and living room are together so I can't avoid the mess.  I reluctantly give in, but in actuality, I find that it is in that process, standing with my back to the world,   I find space to really connect with God.  

It is just me in the house.  The water gushes and breaks the silence.  I start with the suds and pray out loud.  I get in rhythm of washing and the tunes come up from inside me, singing loudly from the heart as I stack the soapy dishes to the side.  Draining the sink and scrubbing the silverware piece by piece, I feel calm and pray softly, sometimes without words.  Then I turn on the hot water and I begin to pull each dish through its steamy flow.  I listen for His voice.  I wash the sink, wipe down the counters and the stove.  I breathe.  I have found rest in His presence.

Truth be told, the times I feel most connected with God are when I break away and go out into nature, when I am driving highway miles on wide stretches of road, and when I can tuck into a corner nook at a moody coffee shop.  These are my favorite things to do and God always meets me.  I guess I never realized how much I love my time with Him when I wash dishes too. 

Putting the Soul at Ease

Painting by Hiroko Sakai

Yesterday a couple of friends and I drove the few hours to Dublin to check out a car that I was considering purchasing.  I am not one to rush into decisions like this and a lot of prayer had gone into the whole process.  The night before, though, I caught myself panicking a bit.  Would I know if this was the right car or not?  Would I get suckered and have used God's money irresponsibly? If it was no good, would I have wasted both my and my friends' time and paid the costly petrol prices for nothing?  My emotions were all over the place and in the end I just had to pray, to ask God that He would do as He has done before, giving me that sense in my spirit of a definite yes or no.

Often, especially as Christians, our desire to do what is right becomes the stress that holds us back from doing anything.  We can easily begin to over-think things, like we are playing a game of chess and somehow have to figure in all the possibilities and ramifications of the each move, preventing us from actually moving. We get so lost in our own attempts to assses,

our emotions begin to dominate our choices 

and we either rush into something or retreat entirely.

Over the last few weeks I have talked about the REST God has been bringing to my body and the REST He calls us to spiritually, but what can lasso our emotions and bring them back into proper order, bring them into REST?

Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 

--Phillipians 4:6

When we become anxious we are letting our emotions dictate to us based on what we perceive with our own eyes.  One examination of the word used here reveals a sense of being tossed to and fro, an emotional unrest.  In this verse, we are again being called to REST, this time in our emotions.  As Christians we know we are supposed to pray and trust God, but when our emotions get the best of us, it is hard to really let go.  If we read the verse again however there is something more mentioned than just the anxiety and the prayers; there is thanksgiving.  When we give thanks we are not just glorifying God, but speaking to our own heart about His faithfulness.  When we are struggling to find hope for the big things, we begin to thank Him for the small things.  Somehow our faith builds and we get so caught up in His goodness that it is easier to do that which He called us to do, to TRUST Him.  We move so much into Him that our emotions are restored to a proper functioning order and we have peace, even if the situation still seems uncertain.

 Thankfulness brings about emotional REST.

We arrived safely in Dublin, meeting up with a friend from our sister church there with a background with auto mechanics.  Upon investigating the car, I just had this gut feeling it was a no, but I waited as my friends checked over the engine.  My friend noticed details that were questionable and then more evidence that the car had been in a major crash.  When the salesman asked why we weren't buying it, we simply said we didn't want a car that had been previously wrecked.  He asked my friend to show him, after which he got very rude calling us liars and asking us in not so polite words to leave.  During the whole instance I had total peace without even my emotions getting riled at the behavior, because I had already begun to thank God for answering my prayer for giving me that definite answer for which I had prayed.   I continued thanking Him for things like the bonding between my friends during the journey, for the gift of service from my friend in Dub and his teaching us key things to enable us to check engines ourselves.  In fact, by the end of the day, I had been thanking God to such a degree that I was so full of faith, 

                            I was experiencing peace 

about other bigger emotionally fueled issues that I will face in this coming year.  I may not have come home with a car, but I was at rest and it didn't even seem to matter where the day or petrol costs went.  I can trust God with these things.

Are you ready to find rest?  In those toughest, most emotional times, will you begin to thank Him?  If you cannot thank Him yet for specific things regarding the situation because of emotional wounds, can you at least thank Him for the little things?  Just thank Him, and begin to experience His REST.

In the Beginning...

When most people think of the word adventure, they think of things filled with action, exploration and excitement.  When those same people think of rest, they may think of still, sleepy things.  I would challenge them to consider that  

some of the best adventures 

                                                   happen in a place of rest.

I first came to Ireland on a holiday from Uganda.  I was in a place where I was desperate for two things, Christian fellowship and rest.  Because of a lot of the challenges I was facing with my work in Uganda, I was broken and raw.  I knew I needed some space to breathe, to pray and listen to what God would say.  Going to Ireland, even for a holiday, felt too frivolous.  When I finally decided to go to Ireland for the visit, it was because my own emotional welfare demanded it.  I had finally become desperate enough to obey God's call to rest.  That visit ended up being one of my greatest adventures.

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,^[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”  ²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
 ²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”
    ²⁹ Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. ³⁰ And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
    ³¹ God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.  
¹ Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.
 ² By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. ³ Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.       -- Genesis 1:27-2:3

We know God considers rest as in important part of life, even from the very beginning of creation.  We see Him model this at the end of all His labours.  However when we look at man's place in this passage, we can see something very interesting.   Man's first day was God's seventh.   
                                Man was born into rest.

I imagine Adam, entering into his existence with the breath of God, being awakened not as a baby, but as a man into a world filled with the creation of God.  God had said it was his to live in and to tend, to oversee.  Can you imagine exploring the world God had given, tasting the fruits and naming the creatures?  I wonder if he laughed with joy as he marveled.  This was adventure.

As one who finds so much peace by just being in nature, my visit to Ireland was an amazing exploration of God's creation.  I was everyday meeting new people.  God was speaking to me about His plans for me.  At first I struggled to accept them, actively rejecting the notion, but when I surrendered to the idea that this was where God was calling me, I became overcome with excitement.  There is nothing like a transcontinental move to get your adventure meter into the green.  Mostly though, I was finding adventure in the time alone I was having with God during this time of rest.  He was showing me things about myself - wounds that needed healing, gifts He wanted to develop in me, and faith He wanted to stretch.  
In my rest,  
             I found adventure.

Last week, I wrote about God's river, and finding rest in His current.  When we surrender like this, we can hear God so much more easily, but it goes beyond just that.  When we are totally dwelling in His rest, imagine what great adventure we may have!  Action, exploration, and excitement are pretty much guaranteed... 
Are you ready to dive in and let Him take you on an adventure in rest?

check out more on the topic of rest by joining our JAM Session at Bonnie's