Asheritah Ciuciu: Thank you so much for being here today, ladies. When the Revive Our Hearts team told me how many people had signed up for this session, I said, “Wow! We’re a busy lot!” That so many of us would identify with soul care for busy women and a desire to find rest in the chaos of life — I’m right there in the midst of it with you, and I want to share today that there is hope. And that’s what we’ll talk about, that we can find rest for our souls in Jesus.

For me, this really started coming to a head a couple years ago two weeks into the COVID-19 lockdown. It felt like the world was falling apart. We were shut in our homes. My husband was trying to work from home. My children were trying to do school from home. I was trying to continue to write and serve our online community from home. Meanwhile, I had to keep the kids quiet while my husband was on conference calls, and Lord help us if we both had a conference call at the same time! They insisted on being fed . . . again . . . and again . . . and again . . . and again! It felt like the dishes were piling up in the sink and the laundry baskets were overflowing.

And I got to a point one day when I was standing at my kitchen sink, and the kids were in the living room arguing over Lord knows what, and I had just reached my breaking point. My palms started getting sweaty. My heart started racing. My vision started getting dark. I had never experienced anything like this in my life. And it felt like my body was betraying me. I thought, “This is the end. I’m having a heart attack.”

Ends up, Dr. Google said it was a panic attack. It was the first panic attack I had ever experienced. And I made my way to the only quiet place in the house that I could find—the laundry room. And I shut the door behind me, and I slid to the floor, and the only thought in my head was, “I can’t do this anymore! I can’t do this anymore!” And over and over that soundtrack played in my mind, “I can’t do this anymore!”

I was coming off of a season of intense ministry doing good things for a good God but running myself ragged. And then add the shut down, the virus, the political tensions, the relational tension of, “Do you mask, Do you not? Do you visit? Do you not? What is this going to look like? When are we going back to work? When are the kids going back to school?” . . . “I can’t do this anymore!” And it felt like I was standing on the edge of a cliff, and one gust of air would push me over.

I wonder, have you ever felt that feeling? Have you had that cliff moment where you feel like, “I can’t do this anymore”?

And on that laundry room floor as that soundtrack played in my mind over and over again, “I can’t do this anymore,” there was another voice that spoke in the quiet. And it was a quiet voice. And that voice said, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.” A verse I’d memorized years ago, not knowing that I would need it that very moment. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.”

And I thought, “Lord, it’s true! . . . But I can’t do this anymore. I just can’t!” And again, His still small voice, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in time of trouble.” And over the minutes that followed, the echo in my mind of “I can’t do this anymore,” got quieter and quieter, and the voice of truth that God is my refuge and strength got louder and louder. Until about ten minutes later, I was still sitting on the laundry room floor, tears streaking down my cheeks saying, “I know I can’t do this anymore, but God, You are my strength. You are my refuge. I will make you my hiding place!” I just had to figure out how. How do you cling to God’s promises like Joni shared with us when it feels like you’re caught up in the chaos of life?

You know, conferences like these are fantastic. I love them, because we come here to be refreshed. We come here to be reminded of what is true. We come here to be refocused on God, on the truth that Heaven rules. But what happens when you get home? How do you keep living out these truths in the midst of the laundry piles, in the midst of needing to plan dinner and grocery shop, in the midst of those bills that are piling up and you have no idea how you’re going to pay for them? When your teenagers act out and when your marriage is falling apart? How do you rest in God’s promises in the midst of that chaos?

That is what I hope that we will share together in the next fifty minutes. Not just sharing with you how God has worked in my heart and life, but also giving you an opportunity here toward the end where we will have a time to rest in God’s presence.

This is one of my favorite things to do at conferences, because you get to this point, about twenty-four hours into a conference, and you get conference brain. Anybody? Do you know what that is? I feel like my brain’s going to explode. It’s all good stuff. And you go to someone in the coffee line and say “Hi” and introduce yourself, and they say, “Yeah, we met yesterday.” “Sorry. Sorry about that.” And so one of my favorite things to do at this point in the conference is to invite women to come and be with Jesus. So yes, you’re going to hear from me. I’m going to share how God met me in my own chaos and how He continues to invite me to find rest in Him. And I want to issue that invitation to you as well, that you would find rest in Jesus in the midst of the chaotic, but also that you would find it here, in the midst of this conference. If you’ve not made your way yet to the prayer room that you would be able to meet with Jesus here today. So make sure you stick to the end, because I truly believe that’s going to be the very best part.

These are my little ones. And I think everyone prepared me for how hard parenthood would be—sleepless nights. One of my children did not sleep through the night for four years. We have some anger issues in our children. We have stubbornness and a strong will, which I am praying over that child that God will raise them up and be a leader for their generation. We have a comedian in our bunch that thinks interrupting family prayer to tell a joke is appropriate. Everyone told me how hard parenthood would be, but no one really prepared me for how much fun it can be. So much joy in getting to parent these children, even if most days look like this—the chaos, the running, the non-stop go, go, go.

I grew up in a Christian family, a missionary family actually, with parents who taught me to read my Bible and pray every day if you want to grow. And so from a young age, I would have my time with Jesus. I would read my Bible. I would pray in my room. I’d pull out my journal and journal it. My dad taught me how to pull out concordances and look up words in their original Greek and Hebrew. It was fantastic.

And then I had kids. And we already established that I was sleep deprived. And so I faced that conundrum of, “In this season, Lord, what does it look like to continue to meet with You?” When I don’t have time for a sixty-minute inductive study. When I can’t get through my entire intercessory prayer list. “How do I keep finding rest in You?”

Because what I want you to know today is that God invites us to find rest for our soul in His presence. He doesn’t have a cosmic to-do list. It’s not that we read our Bible and pray every day because we need to check something off or that we need to impress Him, or because we feel guilty. It’s because He invites us into His own presence. We will only find rest when we find our rest in Him.

These last two years, this passage from Matthew 11:28–30 has been my guiding light. Jesus says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy burdened, and I will give you rest.” I imagine that if Jesus was here in the flesh with us, He would have a lot of things to tell us, but I imagine if He looked out on this group of women here today, He would see women who are weary. He would see those of us who are heavy burdened, and He would issue that same invitation. “Come to Me. If you are weary, if you’re carrying heavy burdens, come to Me, and I will give you rest.” He goes on, and He says, “Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” God invites you to find rest for your soul in Jesus.

Is anyone here today weary? Are you carrying a heavy burden? Then you, my friend, are pre-qualified to come to Jesus. You don’t need anything else. You don’t need a seminary degree. You don’t need a perfect track record. You don’t have to be up to date on your Bible reading plan. Anyone? Bible in a year? How’s that working out? I think we allow the shame and the guilt to keep us from coming to Jesus, but Jesus says, “No come to Me. Come! If you are weary, if you’re carrying a heavy burden, come. Find rest for your soul.”

So what does that rest look like practically speaking? I love solid Bible theology, and we’ll talk Scripture today. In fact, I hope that by the end of our time together, each of you will have found one promise of God that you will be able to take with you and rest in for the next thirty days. That’s one of the ways I hope to equip you. But I’m also super practical. When I have been up three times because my kid has the stomach flu, tell me how. How do I do this? Anyone with me?

So we’re going to use the acronym REST. This is an acronym that I developed in a time of prayer when I sensed that I needed rest for my soul. And I was missing something in prayer. I felt like I was doing the Bible study, I was doing the praying, and yet I felt tired and burnt out. And that’s when God led me to this acronym REST. So if you have your handout, you’ll notice R E S T. That’s what we’re going to walk through in this next bit of time we have together. You can use it to take notes. Or you can draw a line down the middle, which is what I’d do, and take notes on the left, and then save some space to journal your prayer at the end of our time together. If you’re one who likes to journal your prayers, we’ll be praying through the REST acronym as well.

So what does this rest look like? The R stands for “Recite God’s goodness.” And if I find it so helpful when I start praying, whether I’m praying a passage of Scripture, or I’m praying through a difficult situation, a challenging relationship, or a hard emotion that I’m facing, to start by reminding my own heart and soul what is true about God in this situation.

So we recite God’s goodness, reminding ourselves who He is, and what He has done in Scripture, in history, in our own life as well. You know, we worship and adore God, we recite His goodness, not because God is not aware of it, but because we forget. We all suffer from soul amnesia, forgetting who God is and what He’s done from one day to the next. We look at the Israelites and we judge them for doubting God, and yet, don’t we do the same thing? Because yesterday’s manna is not enough for today. So we begin by reciting God’s goodness. “God, You are good. You are faithful. You have provided. I see this in Scripture, I see this in this passage, and I see it in my own life as well.”

We move on to “Express our neediness.” Prayer isn’t just about praising God or asking Him for things, it’s also allowing God to shape our inner beings. So we take time to confess our sins, to acknowledge our need for Him, and our need for His forgiveness. We bring those heavy burdens before Him. We say, “I can’t do this on my own. I just can’t.” Scripture tells us that God’s ear is bent toward the brokenhearted. He leans down to hear our prayer. In Jeremiah He says, “You will seek me and you will find me, when you seek me with all your heart, I will be found by you, says the Lord.” That’s a promise.

I think sometimes, at least for me, I don’t want to bother God. I know in my mind that He’s omniscient and He can handle everything, but when I’m out of dinner ideas, that just—I’m going to take that to Pinterest, okay? That’s not the sort of thing that I tend to pray about. But if it’s something that’s keeping you up at night, if it’s something that’s causing you anxiety, if it’s something that’s taking up a whole lot of your time, it is a need. Bring it to Jesus. He cares about the big details as well as the small, just like we heard Nancy share yesterday.

So as we verbalize our needs, there’s a humility that grows in our hearts as we realize, no it’s true, I can’t do this on my own. I do need Jesus. And He meets me in that place of need.

So the R is “Recite God’s goodness. The E is “Express your neediness.” The S is “Seek His stillness.” (That kind of sounded like the patter of rain. Wasn’t that so cool? Everyone turning their page.)

Here’s the thing, I already shared that I grew up in a Christian family. Reading the Bible and prayer were so essential to my upbringing. And there are lots of different ways that you can pray—lots of different acronyms and formats. But for the longest time, prayer was me talking. I would praise God for who He is. I would confess my sins. I’d thank Him for what He’s given me. I’d bring those needs before Him, and I would talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, and say, “Okay, God, great talk! I’ll talk to You later.” I mean, not that flippantly, but there was kind of that attitude of “Check. I’ve done it.”

And when I was in that season of ministry burnout, feeling like, “God, I’m doing so much for You. I’m doing so much with You. I’m studying Scripture, I’m praying, I’m journaling. I’m doing all the things. Why is my soul so tired? I don’t think it’s supposed to be this way.” And God took me on a journey through Scripture to see just how many times He invites us to be still.

It’s in Psalm 46:10, “Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations.” It’s when Elijah went out, and he thought God had abandoned him, and so he’s asking for a sign of God’s presence. And the earthquake came, but God was not in the earthquake. And the wind came, and God was not in the wind. And the fire came, and God was not in the fire. And then a still small voice. I’m convinced that Elijah only heard that still small voice because of the quiet that had been created. You can’t really hear a cricket in downtown Chicago. It’s too loud. And it’s hard for us to hear God’s voice when our lives are bombarded by notifications, by voice messages, by podcasts, by Netflix shows, by texting with our friends, by blasting music. Listen, none of those things are bad, but if we do not create space in our lives to be still and to listen, we will miss God’s still small voice.

Jesus says, “I am the good Shepherd. My sheep hear My voice, and they follow Me.” (John 10:14 paraphrase) So let me ask you, when was the last time you heard your good Shepherd’s voice calling you by name? Would you recognize His voice? We see this in the Psalms. Time and time again, the Psalmist will praise God. He’ll pour out his heart toward God, and then he throws in this Hebrew word, “Selah.” You know what that means? There’s no clear translation in our language, and so we can kind of guess at it by Jewish tradition, but Selah means pause. Take a breather. Take a moment. Be still. Think about what you just sang.

So we seek God’s stillness. We bask in His glorious love for us. If we’ve spent time confessing sins and expressing our needs, we then rest in the promise that if you confess your sins, God is faithful and just to forgive you of all unrighteousness and to cleanse you because of the precious blood of Jesus Christ. And so you sit still with Him and just marvel. How wonderful! How glorious! You just bask in your Father’s love for you. That you don’t have to hustle your way into the Kingdom, that your Heavenly Father welcomes you with open arms to just come and be still and be loved by Him.

If you belong to Jesus, then His Spirit is in you, a deposit, a guarantee of what is to come, and so you seek His stillness to become aware of His loving presence around you and within you.

You know, David prayed, “Cast me not away from your presence, Lord, and take not your Holy Spirit from me,” (Ps. 51:11) but David was living in the old covenant. We who follow Jesus, who believe on His name, He will never take His Spirit from us! And so if you don’t feel His Spirit, it’s not because He’s gone anywhere. It’s because you’ve not been still enough to become aware of His loving presence around you and with you. And in that silence in prayer, that silence sometimes speaks louder than words.

There have been times in my life when I had no words. Like that laundry room moment, except there was no soundtrack. There was nothing but weeping and groaning. Saying, “God. God. God!” And God promises that even that is a pleasing prayer to Him. Because the Spirit helps us in our weakness. When we have no words to pray, He takes even our groanings, and He brings it before the Heavenly Father’s throne, and He intercedes for us. You just need to come! That doesn’t happen when you’re watching Netflix. That doesn’t happen when you’re commenting on Facebook. It doesn’t happen when you’re texting your friend. 

It’s like what Joni said, we can have these promised, but they can’t just be on our phones. They can’t just be on our T-shirts. We need to cling to them. We need to live them out. We need to rest in God’s promises. And so, if all you do today when we pray is simply groan to Him, that is a pleasing prayer, because the Spirit will take it, and He will intercede. And He will translate it to give you exactly what you need.

I love that Scripture says that we don’t have a great High Priest who is separated from us, who is foreign to us. We have a great High Priest who can empathize with us in our weaknesses. He was tempted and tried in every way. And so we come to the throne of grace with boldness, knowing that we will find mercy and help in our time of need. You just need to come. Just come. Be still with God. Allow Him to envelope you in His loving presence.

So we begin by reciting God’s goodness. We express our neediness. We seek His stillness. And then we trust His faithfulness. We trust that God is who He said He is, and He will do what He said He will do in the world, and in my life, too. Never once has He failed His promises. Never once has He rejected His own. Never once has He turned His back on us. And so we trust His faithfulness by preaching the gospel story to ourselves over and over and over again until it becomes the narrative framework of our lives. 

Until we can look back on that hard experience in our childhood and say, “God, I recognize Your presence there. That was hard, but You were with me.” In that broken relationship to say, “God You did not abandon me. You were good then, and You will be good now, too.” To look and see how He takes all things and works them for the good of all those who love Him. 

And listen, that good is not that we get our wishlist. Do you know what that good is? If you keep reading the verse, it says the good of being conformed into the image of Jesus Christ. That is His promise, that even the hard, He will turn into good. He will mold us and shape us as we spend time resting in His presence. He makes us more like Jesus. So we can trust Him. We can trust Him to be faithful.

So this acronym REST serves as a reminder that God welcomes us to cease striving, to stop worrying, to rest in His loving presence. And sometimes these prayers of rest come naturally, and sometimes I think we need to train ourselves in prayer. Not just intercessory prayer or warfare prayer. Those certainly have their place, but also in restful prayer, in prayers of rest. These prayers are pauses in our day when we stop what we’re doing, even if just for a moment, and we become aware of God’s loving presence with us in that moment, inviting us to live life empowered by His holy Spirit, grounded in His promises, not in our own strength.

So whatever it is that is causing the chaos in your life, that can become the very thing that pushes you to Jesus, if you would just pause and rest. Recite God’s goodness, express your neediness, seek His stillness, and trust His faithfulness.

If that’s hard to remember, which might be, because again remember, conference brain, I put together this bookmark for you that you can print out at home. You can stick it in your Bible. You can find it at prayersofrest.com, and it has the acronym broken out for you there. That’s just my gift to you, hoping that you will take this and use it at home. Recite God’s goodness, express your neediness, seek His stillness, and trust His faithfulness.

I believe that resting in God’s presence reveals His power at work in us and through us. That God is always at work, because He is a good Father who gives good gifts to His children, but sometimes I’m too busy to notice. Does that happen to you? Where I think we get fixated on the things that we focus on, and it seems like all I can see are the burdens. 

All I can see is the hard. All I can see is the broken relationships. But when I pause to rest in God’s loving presence, He reorients my gaze to “fix (my) eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. So let us fix our eyes on Him that we might not grow weary and lose heart.”

When we take our eyes off of Jesus we will grow weary. We will get discouraged. But when we rest in His presence, He will reveal how He is working powerfully in our lives. He will give us rest for our souls.

So again, I ask you, “How?” We have this framework now for prayer. We have this way that we can appropriate God’s promises and Scripture and rest in His presence. But what does this look like at 4:30, when you still don’t have dinner ready on the stove? What does it look like when you’re in the carpool line and someone pulls up a little too close to your bumper? What does it look like when your teenager comes home late and won’t tell you where or why? What does it look like when your boss stops by your office and accuses you of something that you didn’t do? What does it look like when your friend betrays you? What does it look like when you’re just plain busy? When you don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done? How do we rest?

I’m going to share just really quickly a framework that I use, and this isn’t where we’re going to camp. It isn’t where we’re going to spend all of our time. I love that Jesus looks at His disciples coming off of a season of busy ministry, and they were so busy in fact, so many people were coming and going, that they did not even have a chance to eat. Has that happened to you? 

I mean, it’s happened to me at this conference, and I love it! I love that we get to do this, but we live such busy and fast-paced lives that we feel like we don’t even have time to eat sometimes. And Jesus turned to them and said, come with Me by yourselves to a quiet place, and get some rest.

And there are seasons previously in my life when I was able to do this in great gobs of time. Most recently, though, it’s been in short little moments here and there. So what I coach my community to do, and the women in my life, is to take a habit like prayer and start small. Instead of saying, “I’m going to pray for sixty minutes every day for the rest of the year,” (We’ve all made grand goals like that, right?) instead of that, start small. Say, “I’m going to take one promise of God, and I am going to rest in it for just two minutes every day this week.

So step one is start small. Make it small. Step two is link it to something you’re already doing. So there was a season in my life where I had my Bible out right next to my toothbrush, and I would read two verses while I brushed my teeth, and that was it for that season. But God was faithful to meet me in that place and to multiply the bread and the fish to meet my needs. But link it to something you’re doing. Maybe you’ll take time to pray when you make your morning coffee, or maybe it’s when you’re walking the dog, or maybe you’re doing it when you’re out for a walk. Link it to something you’re already doing.

Start small. Link it up. Celebrate those wins. When you do make time to be with Jesus, I’ll tell you what, that’s the work of the Holy Spirit in your life. Jesus says, “No one comes to me unless the Father draws him to Me.” And so, if you’re making time to pray and to rest, it is because God is drawing you to Himself. Celebrate that. Scientists tell us that when we celebrate wins, our brains release dopamine, which is that good feel hormone of “This is good. This was a good idea.” 

When you make time to pray and to rest with Jesus, when you slow your breathing to be still with Him, your heart rate slows down. Your brain slows the production of adrenaline and serotonin, and all those hormones that make you feel stressed out. All of that slows down when you make time to rest with Jesus, even if it’s just two minutes. So you can celebrate that God is doing a good work in your life.

There was a season when my only time of prayer was when I would drive my preschool son to his preschool, and there was a prayer podcast that I would listen to. And my commitment was, because it was also during the season when my other child was not sleeping— (I keep coming back to that, because it was so hard, y’all. It was so hard!) And I knew I couldn’t wake up early to be with Jesus, because honestly, I would fall asleep. And I feel like, you know what, if Jesus can sleep in the boat in the midst of a storm, then He probably gets me too, if I’m going to fall asleep with my face on the Bible. 

But in that season, I said, what I can do, the very first time I get in the car, instead of putting on music or a podcast, I’m going to take the first ten minutes to pray. So that was it. For that whole season, that was my rhythm of rest. It was to pray the first time I get in the car in the day. And if it’s when I drive my son to preschool, then that’s when it would happen. If it was not a preschool day, and it was 3 p.m. to go get groceries, then that’s when it would happen. But it was a small prayer habit. It was linked to something I was doing, and as I was meeting with Jesus day after day, I was celebrating that. I was saying, “Thank You, God. When I feel like I’m at the edge of the canyon, You pull me back, and I can stand on Your promises. I can stand on firm ground.”

God invites us to find rest for our soul in His presence. I love how the Psalmist says this. He says, “Truly my soul finds rest in God.” Truly my soul finds rest in God. And so that rest—You know how we were saying that God takes the hard, and He turns it into good? Sometimes He surprises us. Out of that laundry room moment of saying, “I can’t do this anymore. God, I can’t do this anymore,” He reminded me that He is my refuge and strength.

The next step was to say, “Okay, when am I going to make time to be with Jesus?” And in that season of the pandemic lockdown the only time was to wake up before the rest of my family. And I’m a night owl. Any night owls here? Any morning birds? Any just perpetually tired doves? In that season, I made a commitment to wake up at 7 a.m. to pray and rest in God’s loving presence. And I invited our online community on Instagram. I said, “I don’t know if anyone else needs this, but I know I need this.” 

So the next morning I woke up, and my finger hovered over that “go live” button. And I thought, “What had I committed to? This is the season to sleep in. This is the season to binge watch shows. Why am I waking up so early to pray?” But I had made that commitment. Accountability is another good piece for a prayer habit. And I went live, and dozens of women around the world joined in that first day to pray. And they said, “My soul needs this. I am tired. I’m weary. I’m heavy burdened, and I need to find rest in Jesus.”

And the next day we went live and prayed again, and hundreds of people were watching these videos on replay, joining together to pray in the midst of a pandemic. Day after day, week after week, for eight weeks straight, we gathered every week day to pray, to rest in God’s promises.

Now at the end of those two months, it wasn’t necessarily that the world around us had grown more peaceful, but our hearts had. We experienced the pandemic in a different way, because we had been with Jesus.

And then out of that time of live videos, a podcast was born. The Prayers of Rest podcast. And I share this with you because that podcast is reaching over 130 countries around the world now, in places where you can not go openly as a missionary. I could not go and openly lead a prayer meeting, but we have brothers and sisters who are gathering together to pray, to rest in God’s loving presence. And God took that laundry room moment, and He used it for good. Because that is the good, good Father that we have. When we come to Him broken and needy, He says, “Come to Me, and I will give you rest.” And then He goes above and beyond that, and He uses it for good. This is all to the glory of Jesus Christ. It is His faithfulness, it is His goodness that He draws us in. He draws us near.

If you were writing that down, I do have a QR code. If you want to pull out your camera, you can join us. This fall, in fact two weeks ago, we’re starting a season on praying the promises of God. So if what Joni said resonated with you, if you want to pray God’s promises, I think you’ll enjoy this fall season.

I think also, what I wanted to do is equip you with promises that you can rest in. So we have a whole section of prayers of rest that is thirty days of praying God’s promises. I’ll leave that up there, but what I want us to do in just about five minutes, and then we’re going to go into our time of prayer, is I’m going to ask you to picture what is that heavy burden that you’re carrying? Where do you feel weary? Where do you feel broken? What is it that has pushed you to the edge of the cliff? What is that need? And bring it to Jesus.

So if you ever wonder if God actually hears you when you pray, this promise is for you. God promises to listen to our prayers. From 1 Peter 3:12, “For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer.”

If you ever struggle with the fear of losing your salvation . . . (For years, every time I heard a pastor pray the sinner’s prayer, I would pray it, just to be safe. Anyone else? Just in case it didn’t take that first time, I’m going to pray it, just to be sure.) So if you struggle with that fear of losing your salvation, rest on the promise that God promises eternal salvation to all who believe in Him. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 KJV)

If you feel like there’s just too much failure. There’s too much struggle. There’s too much sin in my past. Does God still love me? Then Rom. 8:38–39 are for you. God’s promise to always love you. Write this down if this is for you. Rom. 8:38–39, “For I am convinced neither death nor life, nor angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” That is a promise that you can rest your life on.

If you struggle with anxiety, if you’re crippled by fear because of those worst case scenarios, or those breaking news headlines, God promises to protect His children from evil. In 2 Thess. 3:3, Paul says, “But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.” That is a promise.

When you feel alone or abandoned or rejected, God promises: Matt. 28:20, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

When you wonder if you’ve messed up God’s plan for your life, God promises to fulfill His plans for us in Rom. 8:28. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son.”

Again and again we can leaf through the pages of Scripture and find His promises. And we know that because of Jesus, every promise is yes and amen. Every promise of God finds its fulfillment in Jesus. And so we can come to Him. We can rest in Him.

And we rest in His presence not just for ourselves, because when we rest in God’s loving presence, it doesn’t just change our life. It doesn’t just transform our relationships. It doesn’t just change the way we do things. I’m here to tell you, it changes generations. The prayers that you pray, you may never live to see the fruit, but God is a faithful God. We can trust His faithfulness.

I learned to pray by watching my mom pray. In high school I took a photography class, and I snuck into her room one day, and I saw her on her knees the way I frequently would see her at home when no one was watching. I just happened to have a camera with me that day. This is how I saw my mom day after day, resting in God’s presence, doing battle on her knees in God’s presence, storming the gates of heaven for her children. And her prayers are bearing fruit in my life.

But you know, my mom learned to pray from her grandmother, my great-grandma. I never met this woman. This is actually at my mom’s wedding. I’ve never met her, and she never got past a fourth grade education. And yet this woman would pray powerful prayers based on God’s promises. She would pray them for her eight children, and then she would pray them for her grandchildren, and she would pray them for her great-grandchildren. She prayed for me. She prayed for my kids. And I am convinced that I am where I am today in part because of her prayers.

I know many of you here today are standing on the shoulders of spiritual giants who have come before you—those women who have prayed over you. But I also know that some of you here today do not have that legacy of faith. You do not have that mom. You don't have that great-grandma. You might be the very first one in your family to come to Jesus. And I want to tell you God can change the generations to come through your prayers, because there is power in the name of Jesus. You can be that great-grandma for your great-grandchildren. 

She was the first one in her family to turn to Jesus in Communist Romania in the 1960s where it was illegal to pray publicly. It was illegal to be a Christian. She dared defy the government, because Heaven rules. And she’d get on her knees, and she’d tell her granddaughters to get on their knees, and she would pray. And now I have the privilege of doing the same with my own children.

And in this busy season of motherhood, my prayers of rest are often short. I try to get on my knees with my children, and more often than not, they’ll complain that they have a boo-boo on their knee, so they can’t kneel. Their prayers all sound the same. “Thank you, God for this food.” But it’s 9 p.m. It’s bedtime. There’s no food there. And I’m choosing to trust that by spending time with my children in prayer, by modeling for them a time of resting in God’s presence, that they will someday be the women and men who are praying for their children, for their churches, for their communities. That they will have found rest in God’s presence not just for their own life, but for those around them as well. That they might bring the pleasing aroma of Christ to a world that is dying.

So if you are weary today and you are heavy burdened, come to Jesus. Come and find rest for your soul in Him.

So what we’re going to do now is take some time to pray. I love, the Psalmist says this in Psalm 116, “Return to rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you” (v. 7). So we’re going to pray that verse that we might return to rest. And if you have your handout, you can write that verse at the top of the page. “Return to your rest, my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.”

So let’s begin by reciting God’s goodness, praising Him for who He is and for what He’s done in our lives. And I will lead us in prayer, and then I’ll give you some time to talk to Jesus. Tell Him what’s on your heart. Tell Him the burdens that you brought into this conference. Be still with Him. Let Him comfort you with His presence. So let’s begin by reciting God’s goodness.

Oh God, You are the giver of every good and perfect gift. And even the ability to rest my body, to rest my soul, all of that comes from You alone. Only You offer the protection, the safety that I need. Jesus, only You, only You would welcome a bunch of tired, weary, bedraggled women who, who feel like it’s so chaotic. We want to rest in You. We want to come to You. God, thank you that You are the one who welcomes us with open arms. We praise You, Jesus.

So in the next few moments, recite God’s goodness in your own life. Looking back, when has He welcomed you with open arms? Can you see Him standing before you inviting you to come, even now?

Let’s move now into a time of expressing our neediness.

God, if we’re totally and completely honest with You, we’re not really good at resting. Our souls don’t rest in Your goodness the way that they should. It’s easy to either hustle from one project to the next or to numb the exhaustion with scrolling and snacking, with entertainment and distractions. Sometimes we’re so tired that we don’t even realize just how exhausted we are. Like Augustin said, our hearts are restless. We keep turning to other things instead of turning to You. God, we confess our idolatry. We confess that we take on more than You have given us to do.

So God, draw our hearts to Yourself. Bind our wandering hearts to You. Help us to find rest in You alone. Let us become so aware of Your goodness and Your presence that our soul might sigh with relief. As we put our shoulder next to You, Jesus, as we enter that yoke, may we feel our burden lighten. Because of Your presence, because Your yoke is easy, and Your burn is light, and if our souls are heavy today, that’s not from You. So help us now to lay those heavy burdens at Your feet.

So now it’s time to seek His stillness. I invite you right now, right where you are, just take a few deep breaths. It is God the Creator who made Adam and fashioned him and then breathed life into him. So breathe deeply now, just becoming aware of His presence filling you and energizing you, bringing rest for your soul. Be still with Him now. There’s no need to say or do anything. Just rest in the assurance that your Heavenly Father is holding you securely in His love. Just be still with Him. Just be held by Him.

And finally let’s trust God’s faithfulness—that He is who He said He is, and He will do what He said He will do. Oh God, You are the one that we can rely on. My soul finds rest in You alone. And so now, God, we trust that Your goodness and Your mercy will follow us all the days of our lives, that we might rest securely in Your presence forever.

Whatever that heavy burden is that you brought to Jesus today, that you left it at His feet, hold up your hands, palms up, open in surrender, and say, “God, I trust You. I trust You. I entrust to You this relationship, this project, this bill, this deadline, this need, this desire. Whatever your heavy burden, don’t just lay it at His feet, but surrender it to Him entirely. Say, “God, I trust You to be faithful, and as You began a good work in me, You will be faithful to complete it to the end.”

“Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before His glorious presence without fault and with great joy—to the only God our Savior be glory, majesty, power and authority through Jesus Christ our Lord before all ages now and forevermore! Amen.” (Jude 24–25)

All Scripture is taken from the NIV unless otherwise noted.