Perceptions from the Peninsula ~ 2
‘Rest in the Lord’
Throughout the centuries, the Lord has drawn certain people to express this intense devotion to Himself in more radical ways. It is surely no coincidence that in the days immediately before His crucifixion, Jesus withdrew once more to the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus. He could have used these final days to pump in as much kingdom teaching and strategy as possible into the hearts of those who would be leaders in His coming Church: instead, He chose to spend the time with a family who loved Him wholeheartedly and who were clearly close to His heart. 

I will bring him near and he will come close to Me,
    for who is he who will devote himself
    to be close to Me?'
        declares the Lord in Jeremiah 30:21. 

I love the way the Lord promises His people not only help but also rest. He knows full well that we would crack up if we did not receive it! The Lord is jealous for our mental and spiritual well-being, (e.g. Exodus 33:12-17, Isaiah 63:14, Matt. 11:280-29 Mark 6:31, and 2 Thess. 1:7, where the word ‘relief’ can also be translated ‘rest.’). 

If rest were the only characteristic of this call to a life of intense devotion, then we might risk falling foul of the equally clear biblical injunctions to shun all forms of idleness. As I have sought to expound in Intimacy and Eternity, it is rather the case that there are certain prayers, visions and insights that can only be birthed out of this intense intimacy with God. The ‘rest’ prepares our spirits to be receptive enough to come onto God’s wavelength and strong enough to wage and endure the spiritual warfare.  

For obvious reasons, very few receive a ‘full-time’ call to embrace a Levite’s way of life – it is an all-consuming way of life(!)– but we should be open to the equivalent of a Nazarite call to embrace specific seasons of intense seeking of the Lord (cf Numbers 6:1ff). People reading this passage tend to focus most on the things the Nazarite is not allowed to indulge in rather than pressing in to the real heart of the matter – the special closeness to the Lord implied in verses 2 & 8. 

Countless Christians through the ages have used Lent as a time for devoting themselves more fully to the Lord, or have tried following Paul’s suggestions in 1 Cor. 7:5, or have come up with their own creative ways of setting time apart to draw close to the Lord. With the help of your prayers, may intimacy with the Lord be the hallmark of our sojourn in Devon and lead to many lovely things emerging from such swathes of unstructured time as Dominic allows us. It is already a great pleasure to have time to consciously consecrate acts to the Lord, rather than leaping full tilt from one activity to another! 

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