< Daily Devotions

Resting in Jesus

December 12, 2017

NINTH IN A SERIES ON THE GOSPEL JESUS PROCLAIMED

“Come to me… and I will give you rest…” (Matthew 11:28, ESV)

Good News: Rest is near.

Unless you’re a golf pro in Australia or some other warm place, December is a time to rest and get ready for the coming year.

Recently, my mind trekked back to my first attempt at PGA Tour Qualifying. Five hundred of us were in combat for fifty Tour cards.

That war, I lost.

I was smoking in anger when I stomped off the final hole. After signing my scorecard, I marched to the practice tee.

I began to beat balls. And beat balls. Near dark, a pain struck me inside my right leg. Like a sword stab. The pain persisted through the sleepless night.

“Jim, you ruptured yourself,” a doctor said the next morning. “You’re going to need hernia surgery.”

Sometime later I told this story to Deane Beman, the PGA Tour Commissioner at the time.

“We golf pros are an interesting species,” Deane said. “We like to punish ourselves.”

The only upside to my foolishness was that I had discovered a Resource a few years earlier that pulled me through the ordeal. The following year, I won my card.

The Resource I speak of was the Good News epitomized in Jesus of Nazareth.

Since the first day I heard his words, “Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” I had no problem believing the ultimate rest was in him.

But I resisted the “come.”

“Come to Jesus” felt like weakness.

Oswald Chambers helped me see the real problem. “Have you come to Jesus?” he wrote. “Look at the stubbornness of your heart. You would rather do anything than this simple childlike thing, ‘Come to me.’”

True, I was stubborn.

That stubbornness often robbed from me God’s rest in my early days of walking with Jesus. It still does if I don’t get my head right and come to him.

If you happen to be a person like me and are still beating on yourself, Jesus offers a way to stop. To find true rest in him.

He says, “Take my yoke upon you…” (Matthew 11:29).

“What is the yoke of Christ?” asked scholar, pastor Dallas Willard. “This language referred to oxen… being yoked together to pull a load with him. What is his load?… Bring the reign of God into ordinary life. This is why he came, lived, and died…. This was his message for everyone.”

So I have to ask myself whether I will come to Jesus. Will I take his yoke and pull alongside him? Will I do this now? I think you know my answer. I invite you to join me in your own prayer.

Jim Hiskey
December 12, 2017
Copyright 2017 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.

Other devotions in this series:
1 A Large Mistake
2 The Key Fundamental
3 After the Humiliation: Good News
4 The Garland
5 Much Ado About Much
6 The Living King and the Enduring Kingdom
7 The Kingdom Message
8 Resting in the Good News

Links Players
Pub Date: December 12, 2017

About The Author

Articles authored by Links Players are a joint effort of our staff or a staff member and a guest writer.