Come and rest here.....

Come and rest here......come and lay your burdens down.

The lyrics to Kari Jobe's song 'Here' beckons me to stop, press the pause button on my life and simply be in the presence of God. In a world where we are so crazy busy with appointments, school runs, day jobs, sports and social lives in can seem impossible to fit God in to our lives, especially when we feel like we are being pulled in every direction at once.

Yet that is just what He wants - God desires a relationship with us, not a fast five minute prayer each night before we drift off to sleep, but all of us, all of the time. Colossians 3:23 says 'Do everything as if you are doing it to the Lord', and that means how we rise each day, how we greet our family over coffee in the morning, how we conducts ourselves on the morning commute, how we perform our daily tasks, everything. God wants to be part of our lives, He wants to share the mundane, the little intricacies of our lives that no one else knows because we deem it to be too unimportant to share. God wants to be in that passing thought, that fleeting moment, so that He can reveal Himself to us in a way that we have never experienced before.

In order for God to come in we have to let down our guard, take down the defences and open our hearts to him, warts and all. We need to shake off the shackles of sin, shame and guilt and know in our deepest innermost place that God loves us completely, utterly and totally, just as we are in that exact moment. God doesn't want perfect people, He knew we could never get it right 100% of the time, that is why He sent Jesus. All God needs us to do is to accept Him, accept Jesus, and willingly invite them into our hearts and lives and they will do the rest.

As I listen to this song tonight, I am reminded just how much my God loves me, enough to send my saviour Jesus Christ to die for me. That I am so precious to Him, that he couldn't bear to see me lost forever, but rather He chose to reach out His hand and touch my life that I might be changed forever instead. It has been 10 years this year since I first made the decision to follow Jesus and trust Him with my life, and I have never looked back. Yes there have been tough times, but God has held my hand every step of the way, and the blessings poured back out from heaven have been overwhelming.

This last decade has provided some of the most transformational, defining years of my life, years where I grew to know and love a Saviour who loves me, years where I grew as a woman, becoming more confident in who I am and why I am here, years where I met my lover and soul mate, David Edwards and became his proud wife and mother of his two children.

I am blessed beyond measure, and it is all because I first stopped, and listened to that still small voice ten years ago. My prayer is that I will never stop listening, never stop taking time out to be still and know that He is God, to spend precious time in the presence of the the Lord, being restored, sanctified, healed and embraced by my heavenly father. If you don't know Jesus today, don't wait another moment, invite him in and He will change your life for the better. I would love to pray for you if you make that decision today, otherwise get in touch with your local church who will support you through the early stages of getting to know Jesus and becoming a Christian through valuable resources like Alpha.

God bless you

R xx