“Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Matt 11:28
We start by looking at the invitation of Jesus in the above text. Of course, our text is talking about life that is more than just physical and emotional exhaustion.
Religion can make you feel like you have to get yourself cleaned up first. You have to become good enough, make yourself acceptable, serve God, prove that you are serious about him and then, hopefully, receive his approval.
But the gospel turns that whole thing around.
Jesus says, “Come to me.”
You come as you are. You receive his grace. You receive his love. He begins to change you from the inside out, and then you overflow in gratitude. You become someone whose life serves and reflects his glory from what you have already received.
You are not serving God to make him love you. You serve because you have discovered that he already loves you.
Actually, when we come to Jesus, we learn to receive his love. As we become secure in that love, God fills our lives with more of himself, so that what we have received begins to overflow into the way we live, love and serve others.
Paul prayed in Ephesians 3:17–19 that: “Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”, that we would be “rooted and grounded in love”, that we would come to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, and that we would be “filled with all the fullness of God.
This is the grace we receive when we come to Christ. His love becomes the foundation of our lives, and what he puts in us begins to overflow through us.
Ephesians 3:12 says in him and through him. We can approach God the Father with confidence and freedom. It’s all about what he has done.
