Come

Matthew 11:28, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”

Oswald Chambers inspired this post with his comments on this passage from “Utmost for His Highest.” Without even reading what he wrote the passage hit me like a ton of bricks in its importance to my life. Jesus says, “Come to me…”

How many times I have felt that calling, or at least had a wanting to go and yet did not. Come to Me Christ says, and we hesitate, we make excuses.

Come to Me… and thought of past sin fills our heart, and we don’t go in shame. Instead we strive against the wind. We run uphill to our exhaustion instead of disconnecting, disengaging, and spiritually running to Him. We burden ourselves with the fight until we are heavy-laden, and even then Christ says, “Come to Me…” Knowing that in our coming we will find the rest we have striven to achieve on our own.

Oswald wrote, “In every dimension in which you are not real, you will argue or evade the issue altogether rather than come; you will go through sorrow rather than come; and you will do anything rather than come the last lap of the race of seemingly unspeakable foolishness and say, ‘Just as I am, I come.’ As long as you have even the least bit of spiritual disrespect, it will always reveal itself in the fact that you are expecting God to tell you to do something very big, and yet ALL He is telling you to do is ‘Come…’”

There will come a great spiritual awakening to you when we just go to Christ without agenda, and when we go in spite of ourselves and our human frailties. It is an awakening of the awareness of Him in us, the awareness of the Kingdom of God; and it happens when we freely go, “just as we are” to Him in any moment… in every moment.

Oswald continued, “How often have you come to God with your requests and gone away thinking, ‘I’ve really received what I wanted this time!’ And yet you go away with nothing, while all the time God has stood with His hands outstretched not only to take you but also for you to take Him.”

We go to God in need or habit, or for a multitude of reasons outside of His calling us. And nearly every time time God is saying come be with Me. Come be aware of my presence. Leave your request at home for He already knows what you need. Leave you sins at home, He already saw them and knows your character far deeper than you will ever understand… just come. Saul needed David to play his harp to quiet his soul, but Jesus is saying just come to Me, right here, right now and be aware of my presence and in that awareness your soul will quiet. In that awareness there is peace. The peace the bible talks about that is beyond all comprehension.

We say, God give me millions and I will give it away for your work. We say God fix our spouse and then we can better serve you. We come up with every worldly solution in the possible to fix our spiritual brokenness and Christ is saying the only need, the only answer is come be in His presence.

He says, I don’t need your effort; you need My presence… so come.

And I will say this again with no disrespect to any institution of church or minister. There is a presence of God that is available 24/7 if we will just come. You do not need a Christian play list or perfect worship. You do not need a service or congregation. You do not need a preacher or a message. You simply need to come and the most magnificent manifested presence of God is available every day because He and His kingdom reside in you. Trust His mercy. Trust His grace, and come.