The Rest You Keep Postponing
The Rest You Keep Postponing
Tolu Olowoyeye · September 28, 2026
Tap any Scripture reference below to read it, and listen.
The disciples had just come back from a demanding stretch of ministry. People were coming and going in such numbers that, Scripture says, they had no leisure so much as to eat. It is the kind of season we tend to wear as a badge, full, busy, needed, important. And into exactly that season Jesus said something we almost never expect from Him: "Come aside by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while" ().
Notice He did not scold them for slowing down. He did not tell them the harvest was too urgent to pause. He led them away from the crowd on purpose. The Lord of the harvest was, in effect, prescribing rest to His own workers, because He understood something we resist with everything in us: the work of God does not actually depend on our refusal to stop.
That is the quiet root of most of our exhaustion. We tell ourselves we are being diligent, when often we are being proud. We keep going because, deep down, we are not sure it will hold together without us. Rest exposes that. To lay the work down for a day is to confess, with your body, that God is God and you are not.
Insight: Rest is not the reward you earn after the work. It is the trust you practise in the middle of it.
There is a reason the Sabbath was written into creation before there was ever a single tired person to enjoy it. Rest was never meant to be a recovery from a broken rhythm. It was meant to be the rhythm. We have inverted it, treating exhaustion as normal and rest as an indulgence to be justified.
I have postponed rest for years at a time, always for reasons that sounded like faithfulness. What I was really doing was carrying a weight God never asked me to carry alone. The invitation still stands, and it is not a suggestion. Come aside. Rest a while. The crowd will still be there. So will the God who is holding it all together whether you are watching or not.
Pray this: Lord, forgive the pride hiding inside my hurry. Teach me to rest as an act of trust, not a reward I never let myself claim. Help me lay the work down long enough to remember that You are the one holding it. Amen.
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