Come to Me

Are you tired? Not just sleepy, but worn out, stretched thin, maybe even burned out on religion itself? If so, listen to how gently Jesus speaks to exactly that condition.

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you'll recover your life... Learn the unforced rhythms of grace.

Matthew 11:28-30 (MSG)

Much of our exhaustion comes from buying into the false narrative of religion. Religion says you must do in order to be. It insists on defining you by what you do or do not do, turning you from a human being into a human doing.

The lie that wears you out

The message is everywhere. Do you want to be a good anything? Then here are the things to do. Do more, and you will be more. Do better, and you will be better. It sounds like progress, but it is a trap.

I read the story of a woman named Kashlee Kucheran, who quit her job to travel the world and share it on Instagram. Before long she was comparing her posts to everyone else's and coming up short. So she did more. She staged photos, bought better cameras. Once, to capture a simple breakfast in bed, she ordered far more food than she needed, bathed, made up her face, set up her equipment, and took over four hundred photos across four hours. In the end she trashed the food and never got a single shot good enough.

After about three years she said plainly, "I was spending five hours a day on my Instagram obsession, and it ruined my life." The girl smiling beside a platter of stale, uneaten food is not enjoying a meal. These images make us crave a life that does not even exist, and then we feel bad about ourselves for not reaching it.

Why did it happen? Because she believed the same narrative many of us do. Do more to be more. It is not only false; it is dangerous. It is the number one reason people are worn out, unhappy with themselves, and unhappy with everyone around them.

From the inside out

Now hear me carefully. We will still do things. But we will not do them in order to become. We will do them because we have already become. It is simply who we are.

Make a tree good and its fruit will be good... for a tree is recognized by its fruit.

Matthew 12:33 (NIV)

This is the way of rest. Outward performance flowing from inward transformation. Make the tree good, and good fruit follows naturally. Living from the inside out is the secret to being re-fired while everyone else around you is retiring. And Jesus tells us how in three simple invitations: come to Me, get away with Me, and learn of Me.

Come: make yourself available

To come to Jesus is to make yourself available to the Father. God is not looking for golden vessels or silver vessels. He is looking for available ones. When Israel built an altar of stone, God said to bring the stones as they were, uncut and unhewn. As the stone simply rested on the altar and the fire burned, God Himself did the work in it.

So how do you live this out? Gather with the children of God, and come as you are. Do not pull yourself away from God's people, because where two or three gather in His name, He is there, and when He is there, He is working on you like He worked those uncut stones.

Notice something about uncut stones. At first they do not fit neatly together. And that is beautiful, because God never asked one person to chisel another into the shape they think is proper. God wants us to let Him do the cutting. So after church, do not just get up and leave. Connect. Share a meal, offer a ride, be part of this loving fellowship. Make yourself available because you love Him and He loves you, and do it because you want to, never because it became one more law.

Get away: recover your life

To come to Jesus also means to get away from what drains you. He says, get away with Me, and He means it in two directions.

First, refuse the company of people who need you to perform in order to be accepted, people who cannot simply let you be. There was a celebrated French chef, Sebastien Bras, who for nearly twenty years held the highest rating a chef could earn. Then, at forty-six, he shocked the industry by asking to no longer be rated at all. He said he wanted to give new meaning to his life and redefine what mattered to him. Do you want a life that flows from within? Then refuse to be ruled by the judgment of others.

Paul said he would not yield to that pressure, not even for an hour, and it did not matter who was applying it. Those are toxic relationships. The unspoken bargains, I will be good to you if you are good to me, what will people say, what will people think. Get away from all of that so you can recover your life. This is the culture we want here. We will judge no one, and we will let no one judge us. It is okay to not be okay here, as long as you have committed to be with Jesus.

Second, get away into silence and solitude. Jesus told His disciples to come apart and rest a while. All the hustle will not refresh you. Many of us are irritable, not because people are irritating, but because we are running on empty. Think of a page crammed with text edge to edge; you get tired just looking at it. Good writing has margins, white space that lets the words breathe. Your soul needs white space too. Pull away, empty the tank of junk, and be quiet enough to know that He is God.

Learn: feed your soul

The third invitation is to learn of Him. Jesus is not only the way to the Father; He is the way to the real you. All things have been given to Him, and He is the most brilliant Being who ever existed, the best teacher you could ever sit under. He can teach you to be the best version of yourself, the best spouse, parent, friend, and worker.

So feed your soul, and learn to ask one honest question through the day: what would Jesus do if He were me? Someone said something cruel about me; what would Jesus do if He were me? My marriage just had a painful fight; what would He do if He were me? I slipped up badly; what would Jesus do if He were me? That question quietly pulls you out of the world's false narratives and drives you straight to Him.

Blessed is the man... whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night.

Psalm 1:1-2 (NKJV)

David describes someone who has escaped the false narratives and now delights in the word of God. And the law of God, ultimately, is Jesus Himself. Get your delight, get your high, from His word. It happens the way any healthy habit forms, as your mind learns to enjoy the meditation, the memory, the engagement, until the unforced rhythms of grace become natural to you.

The goal is not doing, but being

Study the Scripture with the intention to actually live it, and you will quickly discover you cannot, not without God changing you from the inside. But the moment He sees a willing heart, He begins to deploy all His resources to change you.

So here is your one aim: be with Jesus so closely that you become more and more like Him, until you begin to live as He lived. It will not make the world easy. But it will make your life light, even in a heavy world. Come to Him, get away with Him, learn of Him, and start living from the inside out.