Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you. Ps 116:7
Martyn Lloyd Jones and my pastor Joe Thorn are surely right: we need to preach to ourselves. Such a mandate finds its support in Scripture in passages like Ps 116:7: “Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.”
If you are like me, you find your heart often cold toward God, jealous of others, and anxious about circumstances. Your heart feels full of turmoil and lacks rest. How often we leave our place of rest in God and drift into the desert of unrest. We turn away from the only One who can sustain us and calm the tumultuous ways of our emotions. We are like senseless sheep as we forget God’s word and dwell on doubts. We feed on the bread of uncertainty, instead of the bread of life. Our heart needs us to speak to it, to remind it of God’s truth. We must tell our heart: ‘Return, O my soul, to your rest.’
As we remind our heart to rest, we can do what the Psalmist does here: reassure our heart with the kind ways that God has dealt with us. The ways that God has shown us kind are truly bountiful: God has created us to have joy in Him forever; while we were sinners, Christ died for us, to reconcile us to God; we are never alone, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, God is always with us in our trials, leading us forward. These are beautiful, bountiful blessings. When we meditate on these and return our trust to our trustworthy God-King, our rest returns.
Let us join the Psalmist and preach to ourselves this week: Return, O my soul, to your rest; for the LORD has dealt bountifully with you.
