You’ve all heard the little song, “You better watch out, you better not cry. You better not pout, I’m telling you why. Santa Claus is coming to town. He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows when you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake.” I think a lot of us treat God like Santa Claus. He loves us more when we’re good. So we better be really, really good if we want God to love us more.
I’m amazed at the number of people who call themselves Christians who have absolutely no inner conviction or confidence that God loves them as they are, not as they ought to be. That’s why we can’t rest. That’s why we’re working constantly to prove ourselves and earn our way in life. We’re trying to earn God’s love. But you can’t do that. Good works do not bridge the gap between you and God. Only grace can do that. Only Christ can offer grace.
So we started out in this talk by talking about why people are so serious, why people have such frowns on their faces, and we dealt with that with four reasons for our inner restlessness. And then we talked about what rest really means. We used the word rest and gave four points each based on a letter: R-E-S-T. Listen to the talk and see if you find yourself reflected in the story about the tube of toothpaste.