HEART REST - F.B.Meyer

I have left out of my addresses a great many themes, such as justification, and adoption, and inspiration, and the second premillenial advent, all of which I steadfastly hold. I have tried to hold up to you the doctrines of the inner life, not the objective,. but the subjective, side of Christianity. But in expounding the latter you must not suppose that I do not with equal tenacity hold the objective, the former.
I hardly know how to finish this series, except by speaking upon the rest of God. If I can only be the Joshua to conduct you into rest, my work will be worthily finished; for the climax of the teaching of the inner life is always the perfect rest of the heart.
The voice that breathed o’er Eden spoke of rest. In Gen_2:3 we are told of the rest of God, and upon that day there fell no night, because the rest of God has no shadow in it, and never terminates. God has left open the door. It stands wide open, and every heart which He has made may share in it. A rest which is full of work; but like the cyclone, all the atoms of which revolve in turbulent motion around the central cavity of rest, so do all the activities of God revolve around His deepest heart which is tranquil and serene. And it is possible, if you and I learn the lesson, amid anxiety and sorrow and trial and pressure of work always to carry a heart so peaceful, so still, so serene as to be like the depth of the Atlantic which is not disturbed by the turbulent winds that sweep its surface.
Now this rest of God spoken of in Genesis was not exhausted by the Sabbath, or by Canaan; for after each of these had existed for many a century God still spoke of His rest as being unoccupied. And at last in Mat_11:28-29, a simple peasant (so He seemed,) stood up amid a number of peasants and fisher-folk and others, and said:
“On this breast of Mine is a pillow for every heavy heart. My breast is broad enough, My heart is deep enough. I offer Myself to all weary ones in every clime and age as Shiloh, the rest-giver”; for Shiloh in Him had come.
One feels that here is the accent of Deity. He says: “I am meek and lowly in heart.”
And yet He assumes to Himself the prerogative of giving rest to all that labor and are heavy–laden. How can you possibly account for the meeting of humility so great with pretentions so enormous in this meekest of men unless He be more than man, the Son of God incarnate? You will notice that as He stands there upon some mountain slope, with Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum on the land-locked lake of Galilee at His feet, He speaks of two kinds of rest, the rest He gives, and the deeper rest which He shows us how to find. “I will give you rest,” He says, and then in a softer undertone He whispers: “Take My yoke and you shall find rest.”
I will not speak now about the rest He gives, rest from the guilt of sin, rest from its penalty, rest from conviction, rest from an accusing conscience, rest from the dread and the wrath of God. That rest He gave you, beloved, when you knelt years ago at the cross; foot, and from those parched lips the dying Christ, your priest and intercessor, gave rest unto your soul, and being justified by faith you had peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
I will not speak of this, but of something deeper, because I find that there are tens of thousands of Christians who have got the first rest, but have not got the second. They could look death in the face without wavering, but they cannot look panic, disaster, bereavement, pain or trial in the face without disquiet.
“You shall find rest,” but you must look for it. I want to show you where to find it, and how; in three ways, which are one, for they converge in one.

F.B.Meyer