From the Articles

This Week · August 30, 2026

Rest as an Act of Faith

by Michael Jones

We live in a world that worships motion. Our phones hum before dawn with the day’s demands, our calendars overflow like rivers after a storm, and somewhere along the way we decided that exhaustion is the price of faithfulness. If you pause long enough to take a breath, a small voice inside whispers that you are falling behind, that somewhere, someone more devoted is still grinding. Busyness has become our badge of honor, and rest feels like a confession of weakness. Yet right in the middle of that relentless current, Jesus plants His feet and says something shocking. After His apostles returned from preaching, teaching, and healing, after pouring themselves out until they were empty, He did not hand them another assignment. Mark 6:31 records His words: “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” Not “rest when you’ve earned it.” Not “rest when the work is done.” Simply: come away and rest. The Son of God looked at tired servants and prescribed stillness, not more striving.

Why would Jesus command rest? Because rest is not laziness dressed in comfortable clothes: it is an act of faith. Every time you set down your work and trust God with the outcome, you declare with your life what the Psalmist declared with his pen: “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the guards stand watch in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat, for He grants sleep to those He loves” (Psalm 127:1–2). Do you see the breathtaking promise hidden in that verse? God grants sleep to those He loves. Rest is not something you steal from a reluctant universe; it is a gift the Father places gently in the hands of His children. When you refuse that gift, when you push past every limit because you believe the world cannot survive without your constant effort, you are not displaying dedication. You are declaring, in quiet rebellion, that you do not trust God to sustain what He has built.

Jesus understood this tension in the human heart. He knew we would try to earn our way into God’s favor through sheer effort, so He offered an invitation dripping with tenderness: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:28–30). Picture that scene. You are staggering under a load you were never meant to carry alone: the weight of outcomes, the pressure of provision, the fear that if you stop spinning plates they will shatter. And Jesus steps toward you, not with another demand, but with open hands. He does not add to the pile. He replaces your crushing yoke with one that fits, one designed by the Creator who knows exactly how much you can bear. The transformation He offers is not a life free from work but a life free from the slavery of anxious toil, a life where labor flows from trust rather than terror.

So here is the gentle challenge: begin to treat rest as holy obedience rather than guilty luxury. Build pockets of stillness into your week: a quiet morning alone with Scripture before the rush, a phone-free walk where you listen for the voice of God, an evening with family uncluttered by screens, a Lord’s Day spent in genuine worship and renewal. When we gather each first day of the week to break bread together at the Lord’s table (Acts 20:7), to sing psalms and hymns from our hearts to the Lord (Ephesians 5:19; Colossians 3:16), and to open His Word, that is rest at its deepest. It is the soul returning to its Maker and saying, “I trust You.” God does not need your exhaustion as proof of devotion. He made you finite on purpose so you would lean on an infinite Savior. “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10). Rest, dear friend. Not because the work is finished, but because the One who holds the universe has never once let it slip from His hands. - MJ

Other congregations are welcome to reprint this. It may be reproduced in another congregation’s bulletin or newsletter without asking permission. An acknowledgement of Orange View Church of Christ is appreciated but not required.

Bible Questions & Answers

What does the Bible say about near-death experiences?

This is a question that comes up more and more, and it deserves a careful answer from Scripture. Bestselling books and television specials have made near-death experiences (NDEs) a cultural phenomenon. People who have been clinically dead or near death report tunnels of light, encounters with deceased relatives, overwhelming peace, and conversations with a being they identify as God or Jesus. These accounts are deeply personal, and I have no desire to be dismissive of anyone who has gone through a traumatic medical event. At the same time, our task as Christians is not to build theology on human experience, however compelling, but to measure every claim against the revealed Word of God. Paul told the Thessalonians to “test all things; hold fast what is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21), and that principle must govern how we handle this subject. The question is not whether something happened to these individuals but whether their experiences can serve as a reliable window into the afterlife.

The closest biblical parallel to a near-death experience is found in 2 Corinthians 12:2–4, where Paul writes: “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven, whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.” Paul is almost certainly speaking of himself. Yet notice three features of his account that are instructive. First, Paul says he does not know whether it was a bodily or spiritual event, he refuses to speculate beyond what he can verify. Second, he calls the things he heard “inexpressible” (Greek: arrheta, meaning “things that cannot or must not be spoken”), he was not permitted to relay the content. Third, and most significantly, Paul never uses this experience as the foundation for any doctrine. Not once in Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, or any other epistle does he say, “I know heaven is real because I went there.” His entire theological framework rests on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1–4), not on a private mystical encounter. If the apostle Paul did not build doctrine on his own supernatural experience, neither should we build doctrine on the experiences of others.

Scripture speaks with unmistakable clarity about what follows death. Hebrews 9:27 states: “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” The Greek apokeimai, translated “appointed,” carries the sense of something reserved or laid up: death and judgment are a fixed sequence in God’s plan, not a revolving door. Furthermore, Jesus Himself addressed the sufficiency of revelation in His account of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31). When the rich man, suffering in Hades, begged Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn his brothers, Abraham replied: “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them” (Luke 16:29). The rich man protested that a messenger from the dead would be more convincing, and Abraham answered: “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31). That statement is devastating in its implications. God has already given us everything we need in His Word. A visitor from beyond the grave adds nothing Scripture has not already supplied.

So where does this leave us? It leaves us standing on the firmest ground there is: the testimony of Scripture and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul wrote, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins” (1 Corinthians 15:17). Our confidence about eternity does not rest on the reports of those who came close to death; it rests on the One who actually died, was buried, and rose again on the third day (1 Corinthians 15:3–4). Peter affirmed that we have been given “everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of Him who called us” (2 Peter 1:3), and that the prophetic word of Scripture is “more sure” than even eyewitness experience (2 Peter 1:19, KJV). If someone you love has had such an experience, treat them with compassion, but anchor your hope where God tells you to anchor it: in His Son, in His Word, and in the promise that those baptized into Christ’s death and raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:3–4) will share in His resurrection. That is a hope no hospital story can improve upon, because it comes from God Himself. - MJ

Other congregations are welcome to reprint this. It may be reproduced in another congregation’s bulletin or newsletter without asking permission. An acknowledgement of Orange View Church of Christ is appreciated but not required.