No Time for God
Matthew 11:28
Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Can you spare a minute? Is now a good time? We have to ask questions like these so often. We pack our schedules so full, we have no time left.
Do you have time for God? Do you have time to come to his house to worship him? Maybe it feels like you don’t. There are so many other pressing cares and concerns that by the time Sunday morning rolls around, you just can’t make the time.
Jesus was speaking to people like that. They were weary from living in a stressful world. They were burdened by all the things they had to do, including trying to follow God’s commands.
But Jesus says, “Come to me. I will give you rest.” You see, Jesus came to remove the burden from our shoulders. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us” (Galatians 3:13). He has fulfilled all the requirements God makes on us. Because Jesus has fulfilled the requirements of God’s law, we now have access to God for strength in our daily lives. Not only will we live by faith in Jesus forever in heaven, we live by faith in him right now.
What Jesus offers is worth making time for. You can look for rest in other relaxations and distractions. But these can’t give the soul-rest Jesus gives. He forgives your sins. He strengthens your relationship with God. He empowers you.
In fact, he even makes the time for you. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth … . And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day” (Genesis 1:1,4,5). The 24-hour day God created has not changed since he called it good. Not even sin has changed the amount of time God create.
He made the time for you. God lives outside of time. Yet Jesus came into our world of time and space. He had birthdays. He lived to 33 years old. He saw others grow old. He witnessed the passing of years.
Jesus made times for others, even when he was tired. “So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things” (Mark 6:32-34). All this he did to make rest for you.
The best thing about time with God is that it’s the best time for you. Nowhere else can you find external power that renews your inner strength. Nowhere else can you find an ear that has all the time in the world to listen to you. Nowhere else can you find a rest that never runs out.