God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

2 Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea;

3 Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.

4 There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.

5 God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early.

6 The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: he uttered his voice, the earth melted.

7 The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

8 Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the earth.

9 He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder; he burneth the chariot in the fire.

10 Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.

11 The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
Psalm 46

The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace.
Exodus 14.14

28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
Matthew 11.28-30

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.
Psalm 42.11

23 Jesus answered and said unto him, If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

24 He that loveth me not keepeth not my sayings: and the word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me.

25 These things have I spoken unto you, being yet present with you.

26 But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

27 Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
John 14.23-27

We as frail humans are very caught up in haste and busyness and complacency, by and large, from day to day, in modern society in general and in private personal lives in general.  I hear people say things all the time about wanting more hours in a day, or not having enough time, or about always going and never getting "down time" or they're explaining why they're late to one thing because they left another thing early to make it to the next, and they never really get to focus and fully behold what's in front of them because they're always un-present in the moment, lost in their minds thinking about where they've come from or where they're going next.

Haste and busyness and complacency go together in a lot of peoples' lives, and these sins are handed down from generation to generation, and although people can see their need to escape from these detrimental sins, these specific sins have a dulling effect on the conscience and many people are already deadened, given over to the hypnosis of distracting their selves with busyness and changing environments.  These sins are sins which are easy to get out of, but easier to get back into, for someone who has no care to be corrected.  Complacency in general is not a sin.  A lake or any body of water at rest can be called "complacent" and a soul which is complacent is a good thing, if it is not sinful complacency.  Sinful complacency is knowing what is the right thing to do, and not doing it.  Sinful complacency is knowing when something is wrong to do, and choosing to do it anyway.  It seems that today, most people are sinfully complacent in a lot of areas of their lives, yet they've become blissfully distracted by piling on busy things to keep them busy.

It's kind of like "fixing" that squealing noise that the brakes in the car are making, by turning up the volume knob on the radio so it drowns out the noise.

Haste is a companion of busyness and complacency, and haste so often leads to disastrous, limiting choices which lead to a poverty of options.  So many hasty decisions have been last decisions for people throughout history.  The Word of God extols the virtues of patience as a sign of someone who is a child of God.  Patience and faith are what God has equipped His children with for the days we are living in now.  There are a lot of factions and camps and causes and movements and cliques and crews and gangs and affiliations and associations and corporations and governmental organizations and non-governmental organizations and religious groups and irreligious groups and authors and writers and speakers and artists and musicians and producers and movers and shakers and folks of all sorts who are teaching everyone that we need to passionately take up our identity with one of them, as if without finding our identity as one of these groups of passion, we somehow are less than a human being, and we somehow should not belong to society, and we somehow should not be allowed to enjoy the things which were freely available before the mark of the beast system rolled into town and began categorizing and breaking everything into its broken catalogue.

A genuine Christian has no need to join a cause or any movement or become "entangled" with any of the affairs of this world, because we are called to be obedient in Christ, and Jesus Christ is our focus, and He makes us content with what He gives us, when we are focused on Him and on His will.  When we are distracted by the lusts and pleasures of our own flesh, when we are distracted by the wares and wonders of this world, and when we are distracted by the respect-demanders and false authorities which are creeping in almost everywhere nowadays, then we become more engaged with wanting the things that the world wants, and we fall prey to the same trappings and problems which the world has, even though we have the very key of freedom with us, in us, which is the Holy Spirit and being content and at rest in Him.

Being at rest in God is something which you either are or you are not.  Most people readily admit that they are not at rest in God, or that they think this concept is lazy or even against the Word of God somehow.  Sadly, I think most of these kinds of people have a problem which causes them to not see how important it is to read the Bible, because if they would only read what God says about rest, they would see that it is of primary importance, and indeed we are created with the need and function of rest, on most every level of our existence in this world.

In most situations, when I'm talking about rest, I'm talking ambiguously about rest in general, as in all types in general, though there is a type of rest from which all other rest is defined as rest, and that is the rest which our souls find when we step from the dry land where we love our sins and love our sinful selves, to the place where we see our need for the Living Water which is Jesus Christ, and where He meets our needs and satisfies us so that we never thirst again.  To have found this rest is to find a rest which we can compare nothing else with because it is the gift of grace and truth in love which Jesus Christ delivered to us by visiting us for about 33.5 years during His life down here on Earth as He walked around and taught His disciples and those who followed Him how to follow His example of being at rest in the Father above.

If you do not think that rest is important to God for humans to have, then you have not yet let go of your puny understanding of God and you absolutely have a need to throw out what you think you know, and open up the Bible and read for yourself what God says about rest.  You can do a word search for the word "rest" just as easy as I can at biblegateway.com or blueletterbible.com or you can open up a concordance and search that way if you'd prefer to search without using the internet.  I have read and studied every verse in the Bible where the word "rest" is mentioned (I read the King James Version), and this study thoroughly blessed me in my walk with Christ, because He led me to the study and He blessed me by sharing the knowledge of His deep rest with me, and now I know that I am always at rest, even when I am working.

It takes a lot of work to build a sailboat, and it takes a lot of work to figure out how to sail, and it takes a lot of work to get a sailboat all set up to sail out on the water, but once all of that is taken care of, and once you've made it out to the open sea with the wind blowing you through coursing waters, there is a certain sort of rest there which is profound and almost indescribable.  To be able to get to a point where you barely have to do anything more than merely pay attention, and be able to sail a ship and cause it to steer merely by walking around on the deck or leaning, to shift the weight of the boat so it leans one way or the other, this kind of rest is something unique and it can only be achieved by prior work and preparation and readiness.

The kind of deep genuine rest which only the Holy Spirit can provide for our souls is so much better than being able to let the wind push you across the ocean in a sailboat, and it is permanent for those who believe in the name of Jesus Christ, and it could only be purchased for us by Him, by His death on the cross, and only Jesus Christ could deliver this sweet essential gift to us.

Whatever kind of rest it is that we rest within, we are choosing to rest when we rest.  When we choose to stop participating in the activity of rest, then we are choosing something else.  For someone who is exercising, they choose to leave one sort of rest to go work out, and then when they are finished working out, they may choose to shower and soak in a hot tub, to experience a different sort of rest than the one they left to begin their exercising.  When they get home and lay down for the night to go to sleep, there is a different sort of rest.  All humans experience these kinds of resting from time to time, but the spiritual rest which God provides for our souls is something that only children and believers in Jesus Christ experience, because when we are children, we live by the light which lights us, and God tells us that Jesus Christ is the light that lights every person, but at some point along the way, we succumb to sinful choices when we are young and we choose to lie, and eventually we find that we are in hopeless situations and need Jesus Christ.  How He reveals our need to us is different for each of us, but He does it in kindness for all of us, even when it is in pain.  God says that He wins us by His kindness.  It is ultimately His lovingkindness which saves us when we cry out for saving, and it is His lovingkindness which orchestrated the protections in our life to guide us along so that we can see how great our God is, so that we can have reasons to thank Him and believe in Him more each day.

For the person who has chosen to die to their self, to overcome sin in this life by the name and blood of Jesus Christ, this person has a sort of rest which causes them to be enabled for many great things which otherwise would be impossible, because Jesus Christ makes all things possible for those who believe in Him.  When we believe in Jesus Christ, we learn that He fights our battles for us, and our weapons in this life are things like love and joy and truth and longsuffering and meekness and humility and gentleness and lowliness and our testimony of the love of Jesus Christ.  When we pray, we know that Jesus Christ is listening to us and that He is the Lion Of Judah and the Lamb Which Was Slain From The Foundation Of The World.

When Jesus Christ sent His disciples out two by two, He sent them with very little, and gave them instructions on how to travel light and in faith, and He equipped them with the faith which would believe that whatever they would need He would provide, so those people expected and looked where He was providing their needs.  Most people today lack this kind of faith in many so-called Christian churches, and instead of expecting God to provide what they need, they struggle to provide what they think they need, and then complain to God when they're worn out and wonder why God keeps blessing them even though they keep sinning, because they have bought into a modern lie that this is the Christian way.  Since not many people expect God to heal the sick and the lame and the blind and to raise the dead or move mountains, not many people are looking to Him for these things, and not many people are seeing miracles.

If you are not living beyond your means in such a way so that you are absolutely dependent on Jesus Christ, then who are you depending on?  If Jesus Christ is not miraculously providing for you every day of your life so that others around you are seeing His glory shine in your life, then who do people see you focus on?  If you are not talking to God and if God is not talking to you on a regular daily moment-by-moment basis, then who are you worshipping and what are you spending your time thinking about and looking at?

If you are worn out, stop fighting, stop spinning your wheels, and stop depending on yourself or others or in things.  The Bible tells us that the end times enemy wins by wearing out the saints.  Through distraction, through busyness, through lust and pleasures, through lying wonders, and through many words and policies and wars and rumors of war.  These are the weapons that the people of God are equipped against, those who wear what God gave them to wear.

"Religion" means "discipline."  Religion is a spiritual discipline.  God says our righteousness is as filthy rags, disgusting menstrual rags good for nothing but to be discarded.  God does not declare many people perfect by means of their righteousness according to their works.  Only Jesus Christ is Perfect in totality, and only the perfection of Jesus Christ could appease the wrath of God, and by the blood of Jesus Christ we were purchased as sons and daughters, fellow inheritors of the Kingdom of God, and we have His perfection endowed upon us, imputed to us, so that when God sees us, He sees us as perfect, as forgiven, as a child of His.  It requires no discipline at all to become a believer in Jesus Christ; we merely must see our need for Him and come to Him in spirit and in truth, believing that He is the Son of God, and that is it.  Real spiritual discipline, real religion comes after salvation, when we realize how grateful we ought to be to God, and when we get going with declaring His glory and declaring our gratitude to Him and to all who will hear.  Jesus Christ says that His friends are those who obey Him, those who keep His words.  When He says this, it is not like when one of us might say words similar to someone on our same level.. This is our Creator telling us who are His friends and who are His enemies.

Our discipline comes into play by choosing choices which build the Kingdom of God, be it in our own hearts or in the hearts of others.  We get weary and sometimes we stray a little bit sometimes.  We must choose to honor the Holy Spirit when, in His still, small voice, He reminds us of the right way, and we must choose to go the right way even when nobody else is.  We must choose to be honest and live by the faith which we proclaim to live by.  We must choose to be diligent to study the Word so that we may know God's will for our life.  Jesus Christ says that man doesn't live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Father.  Our discipline shines when the world sees that God is talking and we are one of His subjects, and we are focused on what He has said.

10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.

11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.

12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

14 Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness;

15 And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace;

16 Above all, taking the shield of faith, wherewith ye shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.

17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God:

18 Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;

19 And for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel,

20 For which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak.
Ephesians 6.10-20

13 For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.

14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

15 But if ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.

16 This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.

17 For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.

18 But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.

19 Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness,

20 Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

21 Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,

23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.

24 And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

25 If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit.

26 Let us not be desirous of vain glory, provoking one another, envying one another.
Galatians 5.13-26

But the path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

Proverbs 4.18