If it’s true that God’s “steadfast love is better than life” as the Psalmist David claims in Psalm 63:3, isn’t it interesting that we spend so much more time on things of life than on pondering and meditating on God’s steadfast love. I’m thinking about our spiritual lives not our normal day to day lives.  We all live in the world of “sowing and reaping” and we must make a living. But our spiritual lives get swallowed up by the “sowing and reaping” world of our physical lives and we live as if God is our employer who tries to get the best performance out of us, or a policeman hiding behind a billboard to catch us doing something wrong, or a teacher trying to motivate us to try harder. We act as if, even if we don’t think it, our spiritual lives are determined by our own efforts. In other worlds, there doesn’t seem to be any difference between our spiritual lives and our lives in the flesh.

In Matthew 11:28, Jesus said “Come to me all you who are weary and burned out on religion, I’ll give you rest for your souls.” (Check out the Message translation.) Religion gives us all a way to better ourselves. There are laws to keep, duties to perform, and rituals to observe. But those things are all part of the world of sowing and reaping. The Eastern world religions refer to this as Karma. You get what you deserve either in this life or in the next. I’m suggesting that Jesus calls us to leave the religious life and enter into the life that trusts in Him. We’ve all sinned. Yes, we’ve all made our own beds, but Jesus came to earth to sleep in them for us. If we continue to subscribe to either western or eastern Karma, we will never experience rest for our souls. We will spend eternity in the world of sowing and reaping. There will be no escaping our failures. But it’s while in the world of sowing and reaping, Jesus calls to us: “Come to me,” He says, “I’ll give you rest for your souls.” This is why believing in Jesus is not just another religion. He satisfies all the laws, duties, and rituals on our behalf. Don’t you want to sit down for a minute with Jesus and rest?

I hunger for that! My Dad used to say that he wants nothing more than peace of mind. That’s just another way of saying “rest for your souls.” In the first verse of this Psalm, David talks about how much he wants to experience God’s love. He writes, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you.” There are many other Psalms which contain the same idea. Consider one of the most famous Psalm passages, Psalm 42:1-2, “As a deer pants for flowing streams, so pants my soul for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” Nothing in this world satisfies our souls. We have good times, pleasure, prestige, positions, and lots of possessions, but none of them touch the deepest part of our being. It’s to people like us that Jesus says, “come to me…” Think about it!