7 Lies That Destroy Our Best Efforts To Rest

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The things that we do stem from the beliefs we hold true, yes? If I believe that a morning routine is an essential practice paving the way for me to offer my highest contribution throughout the day, I show up. Early. Every day. But if I don’t believe it at my core, I snooze through rounds of wake-up calls, sluggish, unmotivated. I show up where I believe it matters. So the issue, then, is not so much whether I show-up, but whether I believe that it matters.

Truth or lie

When it comes to rest, we are fueled—or depleted—by the repercussions of our beliefs. We err in our beliefs, and we downplay the importance of rest itself, or we do things drain us. In the same vein, if we align our beliefs with truth that we can bank on one-hundred percent of the time, they will guide us into a life that is richer, more fulfilling, and more energized.

Today, let’s take a look at seven erroneous beliefs about rest that seem subtle. They appear harmless. They may take some honest introspection to determine whether, deep down, we assign them the label of true or false. Yet each of these beliefs straddles the top of a slippery slope. They lead to us working for the wrong things and wearing ourselves out in the process. In a nutshell, these beliefs destroy our best efforts to rest.

And when we don’t rest, we get missional living backwards. We focus on the doing, forgetting that doing flows from being. What we do doesn’t procure our identity as missional people. As Christ-followers who have joined His disciple-making mission. We first know who we are because we choose to stay in close proximity to the only One who can tell us who we truly are. And then with Him right next to us, we learn to copy the way He thinks and loves and lives.

Let’s look at these faulty beliefs systems so we can more easily recognize where our thinking leads us away from rest, away from being His, away from being missional.

7 lies that destroy our best efforts to rest

Lie #1: My work = my worth

We’re long-conditioned to believe that our work is synonymous with how valuable we are. So ingrained is this in modern culture that we find it seeping into our home life and church life as well as our work life. Yet productivity is a separate entity from human value. We are each made in the image of the almighty God (Gen. 1:27), and He sees us as immensely valuable—valuable enough to give His very life for—regardless of our productivity and performance.

When we know how dearly loved we are, we are free to do because of who we are, which is far more life-giving than doing in order to up our value.

Lie #2: I can earn God’s love

Believing that our work equals our worth leads us to another faulty belief: that we can earn God’s love. Yet the truth is that God esteems us highly, and it has nothing to do with what we do. He loves us because that is who He is. According to Ephesians 2:8-9,

For by grace you have been saved by faith. Nothing you did could ever earn this salvation, for it was the love gift from God that brought us to Christ! So no one will ever be able to boast, for salvation is never a reward for good works or human striving.

TPT

It’s hard to rest when we think the way God loves us depends on us. We work harder, do more, volunteer more, keep check-marking our list of what we think a good Christian does—but it gains us nothing in God eye’s and eventually makes us weary.

Lie #3: More = better

“More is better” is another belief so common we often don’t recognize it. It’s what drives us to become more proficient at multitasking, brag about how busy we are, say yes to all the things that sound good or that we feel we ought to take on. But voices like Greg McKeowen, author of New York Times bestseller Essentialism, remind us that saying yes to everything results in “the unfulfilling experience of making a millimeter of progress in a million directions.”

Busyness thwarts our good intentions to connect with God and be present with the people near us. We flit around but fail to develop many deeper-than-surface-level friendships. However, when we carve out white space to rest, it empowers us to focus on doing well what is most important. We cannot do it all or be it all to everyone, but we can be missional at our core, deeply connected to Christ so that we can live a life worth imitating in proximity to the people around us.

Lie #4: I must top my last performance

The lie that I must top my last performance is one I uncovered in my own belief system through a guided church-wide series we did a few years back. It was buried so deep it took a whole lot of digging to find, but I began to recognize how many of my daily choices threaded back to this untruth.

Perhaps you can relate to feeling like anything you do well doesn’t satisfy because it means you must do even better the next time. This mistruth is a peace robber and an arch-enemy of rest. It makes you restless and discontent with yourself, which means you have a hard time being present with those you love and purposeful about what really matters.

Lie #5: Rest = laziness

Perhaps the push to increase how busy we are ties into the belief that we must be busy in order to produce the best contribution. We equate rest to laziness. However, while it’s true that inaction can reflect a lack of motivation, a flurry of movement can give a false impression of importance and productivity while essentially destroying our capacity to do our best work. Intentional rest fuels us so that we can concentrate on the worthwhile efforts we pursue.

Lie #6: It’s selfish to rest

Closely tied to the belief that rest reflects laziness is the belief that it’s selfish to rest. We feel guilty for taking a break, shame ourselves for needing to rest. But eventually we burnout. And if we keep at it, the burnouts become increasing harder to rise from.

The real truth is that it’s more selfish to not rest. To think we are capable of relentlessly pushing forward without pausing to refuel. We can’t be our best or give our best to God or anyone around us if we negate our innate need to rest.

Lie #7: I have to be in control

So many of these fallacies point to a desire to be the one in control. It feels unstable, maybe even reckless, to release control. But constantly striving to be one in control destroys our ability to rest. We must never slow, never stop, or control will slip through our fingers. So we hold tighter. Work harder. Worry more. And our rest-depraved souls suffer.

When we flip the script to say that we don’t have to be in control because God’s hands are more capable than our own, we can rest while He does the hard work. We can slow so we can listen to His heart and fall in step with Him. It’s a much more joy-filled way to live!

Rest-fueled mission

Missional living is like a ripple effect, so of great importance is what we cultivate on the inside. The mistruths we believe about rest impact far more than just ourselves, because what we believe, we inadvertently teach through the way we live. So not only are we distracted or too overwhelmed with all the things to lean into mission when we believe the wrong things about rest, we also teach others around us to follow suit.

Rest actually fuels, not slows, mission. A regular rhythm of life-infusing rest keeps our hearts soft to the Lord, fine-tunes our ability to hear his gentle promptings, and fills us so we have something to pour out. It’s a grace-filled way of living, and it takes the pressure off of us so we can truly let Him lead.

A prayer for the weary

Lord, You Yourself show us how to rest. You created rest. And You created us to need rest. We let go of our striving to do it all, be it all. We open our hands and offer you the reins. We are sorry for the times we’ve snatched back what we’ve offered you, for the times we’ve let fear spur us to take back control, for the ways we’ve assigned greater value to what we do than what You say is true of us because of You. Lead us, Lord, nearer You so we might better align our hearts with Your truth. In the precious and holy name of Jesus, we pray. Amen.

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