Rest for Wandering Hearts

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Come Holy Spirit, and fill my soul.
Come Holy Spirit, and make me whole.
Your peace to release, Your grace to impart.
Come, Lord, and bring rest to this wandering heart.

I wrote this sitting on retreat a few weeks ago.

One of the metaphors for sin that we find in the Bible comes from the Hebrew word taha in the Old Testament, which means to wander away or to go astray. Oftentimes God is upset that His people have gone astray and wandered. And it’s true — our hearts have a tendency to wander away from God, to drift. If we’re not intentional about living out our faith, we just wander.

And I suspect that many of us listening this morning, if we’re honest with ourselves, would say that we’ve done that. We’ve drifted, we’ve wandered from God, we’ve gone astray. Instead of being close to God like we once were, we are doing our own thing.

When the Heart Wanders from God

So maybe that’s you today. You’ve wandered from God and you need to come back and find your rest and your peace in Him. Turn away from the things that have pulled you from Him and get back to living a vibrant, strong faith of much prayer, much Bible reading, much worship, and closeness to Him.

But for me, when I wrote that line, I was talking about how I had been unsure of what God was doing in my life. My heart was forever wandering around trying to understand what God might be doing. As a result, I was exhausted, which is why I had to pray, “Bring rest to this wandering heart.” Let my heart be still and know that God is God!

Rest for the Anxious Heart

And maybe that’s you. Maybe you’re trying so hard to see what God is doing in your life. You’re anxious about what He may or may not be up to. You don’t find rest for your soul when you live like that!

Instead, you need to find rest. Jesus said, “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Instead of wandering about in anxiety, come to Him. Put your faith in Him, put your trust in Him, and find rest.

Coming Home to Christ

And so, friends, I hope that instead of wandering, your heart will find rest in Christ. Whether you’re wandering away from Him in sin or simply wondering in anxiety, come home to Jesus.

Every day, come and sit at His feet in the quietness. Place your faith in Him and find the peace that we spoke about earlier this week — the peace that only He can give.

And so I hope you’ve enjoyed this little poem, and maybe, like me, you’ll be praying it over and over again as you go forward from here.

God bless you, friends, and have a wonderful weekend.

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