Arthur John (A. J.) Gossip

Hundreds of men are hoarse from continual speaking, and are wearied out with running here and running there. If things slow down, we evolve yet another type of meeting. And when this new and added wheel is spinning merrily with all the other wheels, there may be no spiritual outcome whatsoever, but there is a wind blowing in our faces; and we hot and sticky engineers have a comfortable feeling that something is going on.

James Hudson Taylor

To every toiling, heavy-laden sinner, Jesus says, “Come to me and rest”. But there are many toiling, heavy-laden believers, too. For them this same invitation is meant. Note well the words of Jesus, if you are heavy-laden with your service, and do not mistake it. It is not, “Go, labor on,” as perhaps you imagine. On the contrary, it is stop, turn back, “Come to me and rest.” Never, never did Christ send a heavy laden one to work; never, never did He send a hungry one, a weary one, a sick or sorrowing one, away on any service. For such the Bible only says, “Come, come, come.”

Ed Stetzer

Jesus’ rest frees us from looking to identity as our savior. As Christians, we have a new identity, rooted in him and his work. The gospel guides what we shape our identity around, so we can freely lay down our rights, our thoughts, and our opinions of ourselves at Jesus’ feet, knowing that he will mold and shape us as a potter does clay. He gives us a new identity that is secured and satisfied in his work on our behalf.

Francis Frangipane

In our anxious, stress-filled world, we must find the rest of God. Yet we are not associating God’s rest merely with the sense of being rebuilt or rejuvenated, which we obviously need and associate with human rest. The rest we seek is not a rejuvenation of our energy; it is the exchange of energy: our life for God’s. It is this divine rest that we seek, where the vessel of our humanity is filled with the divine presence and the all-sufficiency of Christ Himself.

Mrs Charles E. Cowman

The Great Shepherd makes his servant to lie down there. There are times when men say they are too busy to stop; when they think they are doing God service by going on. Now and then God makes such a one to lie down. He has been driving through the pastures so fast that he has not known their greenness, nor apprehended their sweet savor; and God does not mean that he shall lose all that, and so He makes him lie down. Many a man has had to thank God for some such enforced season of rest, in which he first learned the sweetness of meditation on the Word, and of lying still in God’s hands and waiting God’s pleasure.