Abiding Relieves Weariness

Key Verse to Read and Treasure

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the LORD will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. (Isaiah 40:29-31, NIV)

For Insight

It’s not unusual to grow weary in this life. It’s not just our endless striving that brings on weariness it’s everything about life. It’s the “daily grind” as some call it.

Get up. Go to work (whatever that “work” looks like or entails). Prepare for the day. Battle traffic. Pay bills. Tend to chores, kids, family, appointments, contend with health issues. Face challenges. Research solutions. On and on. Day in day out. Year after year. Until we are worn out, worn to a frazzle. Tired and soul weary.

God asks a set of rhetorical questions. Things his people should already know about him. Why don’t they? Why don’t we?

Through the prophet Isaiah God reminds us that he’s not like us. We grow weary. We become exhausted. We fret over the things we don’t understand. We faint when life gets hard. We forget to lift our eyes up higher than we are.

We forget who God is and that God has inexhaustible energy. Unlike humans God doesn’t’ grow tired. He doesn’t get weary. His strength does not deplete or change from season to season. The same mysteries we fret over God already knows the outcomes. The problems we can’t figure out God knows the answers and solutions. We wear ourselves out striving and trying to figure life out, but God already has a plan in place. Haven’t we learned this about our great God, yet?    

Isaiah gave the solution for our weariness. He said the answer is in hoping in the Lord. Not hoping in our own efforts or resources, not in flesh but in God. Hoping in the Lord opens all the possibilities we can’t see or know. Hoping in the Lord gives us a solid foundation to place our hope in. In the Lord we are safe to hope. We are safe to have a new and broader perspective on life and problems. We are safe to admit what we don’t know and understand very much at all. Hoping in the Lord fills us with a new energy, new strategy, a new mindset, and as Paul says Romans 5, and hope does not disappoint us. Hoping in the Lord takes a huge weight off our mental, emotional, physical and spiritual shoulders.

It’s not more work, more fretting, more striving, not even more serving that changes our weariness to strength it’s abiding in the Vine where endless life flows. When we’re weary God leads us away from problem-solving to resting in him.

As the hymn-writer wrote, “When you’re weary and burdened, don’t know what to do, I’d like to recommend my Friend Jesus to you.” Abiding in the true vine will fill us with hope and hope will keep us from falling exhausted and is the answer to our weariness.

Jesus, our True, life-giving and restoring place; the One who gives us strength and the place we can find rest, thank you for restoring us, for giving us new life and energy whenever we abide in your presence. Amen

For Application

What weariness do you take to the Vine? How have you overcome weariness in the past? How will you spend time hoping in the Vine to combat weariness?      

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