Finding Rest in Jesus – Lent 2025

Summary

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Jesus is no stranger to feelings of exhaustion in difficult seasons; He Himself experienced pain and suffering during His life. Jesus knows the burdens you carry and He invites you to surrender them to Him so that He can transform them. In this talk, Michelle Karen D’Silva will help you offer your weariness to the Lord so He can bring you the rest for which your heart longs.

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Reflective Study Guide Questions

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“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Matthew 11:28

1. How do you feel coming into this season of Lent? What burdens are you carrying?

2. Are there problems in your life that you are trying to fix without Jesus’ help? What areas in your life remain in darkness because you are afraid of the Lord’s light?

3. What would it take for you to surrender these burdens to Jesus?

4. Can you think of difficult times in your life where you trusted Jesus with your burdens and He transformed them? What holds you back from trusting Him more readily?

Text: Finding Rest in Jesus

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Peace of Christ. Dear friends, and welcome to the Pray More Lenten retreat. My name is Michelle Karen D’Silva and I’m blessed to be joining you from Qatar and I’m so blessed to be journeying with you this Lenten season. I have been praying for you and believing in God’s very best for you in this season and onward.

Entering Into the Rest of Jesus

And so as we begin, let’s sign ourselves with the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Friends, I want to talk to you today and what it means to enter into the rest of Jesus, especially during seasons of weariness. You know, uh, in my own life in, uh, 2023, I took a hiatus from ministry because I found myself plummeting from exhaustion to exhaustion, ministry work and family commitments, you know, and school schedules toppled over health challenges.

Somewhere along the way, I think, lives were constantly crossed between, you know, ministry commitments and family commitments. And trying to be sold out for Jesus, I was, I think, worn out for Jesus. And in that season, I remember, you know, constantly trying to measure, you know, my worth with my work, constantly trying to measure my family life with how many errands I was running or my spiritual life with how many mission trips I was taking.

One thing was certain, I was running on empty. And I think we can all relate to when the difficulties of our daily routines, you know, exhaust us. Businesses fail, disasters strike, loved ones succumb to illness, pain, loneliness, grief, worry. We’ve all felt this lingering ache for rest. And if this resonates with your friends, as it has for me many times, I invite you to join me as we read God’s word to discover one of the most sublime invitations there ever will be for rest.

Matthew 11:28

You know, we all know that popular verse, Matthew chapter 11 verse 28, “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens. And I will give you a rest.” That word burden is not foreign to anyone. Each of us in our vocations carry burdens. As a wife, I’m constantly trying to live up to the expectations of a good marriage.

As a mother, I’m coping with the pressures of raising our children. A single person is struggling with the temptations of singlehood. You know, a religious might be trying to cope with the standards set up for their orders. Not only are we carrying the burdens of the present, we are also carrying the load of the past.

I wasn’t an obedient son or daughter. I wasn’t a loving parent. I failed as a spouse. I can’t get over the betrayal. I cannot overcome the pain of that sexual abuse, that rejection. And you know, very interestingly, the background of that verse In fact, Matthew, both 11 and 12, focus on the rejection of Jesus and the indifference or the unbelief of those who witnessed his miracles.

And so when Jesus invites us, come to me, he invites us from a place of relatability. He has been there, friends. You know, he understands pain and stress and weariness. Hebrews 4 verse 15 tells us for we do not have a high priest who’s unable to empathize with us in our weakness, but rather one who was tempted in every possible way, yet without sin.

In Isaiah 53, the prophet, you know, looking at the Messiah to come, Jesus, he called him the man of sorrows. acquainted with deepest grief. If there’s any consolation today, it is that Jesus knows the things that keep you awake at night. He’s familiar with the disappointments of your present, or the wounds that you carry of the past, or the worries that occupy your heart about the future, and he invites you, and he invites me to come.

Facing Difficult Seasons in Our Life

You know, friends, very often, I think when you’re faced with a You know, difficult seasons. It’s a great temptation to yield to discouragement. In fact, that is the enemy’s greatest weapon in our weakness. He attacks us at the place where we are most vulnerable. He insinuates his lies, causing us to doubt God, causing us to question God’s love for us, His goodness, His character.

And in the darkness, and I know that I’ve been there so many times, it feels so natural to ruminate over our wounds, isn’t it? It ruminate over how unfair life is, or how ungrateful people are, or how unjust the world is. But the truth is, the more we allow the self-pity to soothe our wounds, the more we remain stuck and stagnant, unable to move forward, the more it robs us of this intimacy, this fidelity that Christ desires to reveal to us, especially during times of darkness.

And this is a season of Lent, isn’t it? And it’s so wonderful because in this season, you know, our hearts are exposed. But not to shame us, but to bring us healing, to bring us complete freedom. And Jesus desires to do just that. He wants to pull us out of this quicksand, this discouragement that the devil uses to rob us of our freedom.

An Invitation From the Lord

And therefore, my dear friends, the invitation come to me is also an invitation to come away from, to come away from. Are there areas in your life that remain in darkness because you’re afraid of the Lord’s light? Are there situations in your life right now that you’re trying to fix with your own intellect, your own strength?

Are there lies you have believed about God? He doesn’t care. Are there lies you’ve believed about yourself that you’re not worthy? You see, Jesus desires that part. He wants us to come to, to him so, so we can confront the most deepest, the most ugliest, the most harrowed parts of our story without fear. And you see this good shepherd who calls us, we see his hands. They are scarred, they have nail prints on them because he goes all the way, all the way to the cross.

And so my dear friends, come to me, Jesus says, all of you who are weary and are burdened, the Lord does not reserve this invitation to a few spiritually strong or those who have figured things out, no.

This invitation is for all who are weary and burdened and overwhelmed in life. No matter where you are at in your life right now, this invitation is for you. And then it says, I love this verse, it says, you know, in verse 29, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

“Take My Yoke”

You know, a yoke, which in Greek is “zugas”, was a very familiar, uh, image in Jesus time. It was a farming equipment made of either metal or wood that was placed on the shoulders of a beast. But when Jesus talked of a yoke, he was referring to two animals instead of one. Both yoked together, bonded together, sharing the Lord, moving, pushing ahead together.

I remember the first time when I read this was I wasn’t very impressed with the idea of a yoke around my neck, you know, especially when I was weary yoke really felt like a burden, but the more I reflected on this passage, I realized that there is such an innate tendency inside of us to intuitively remove whatever is inconvenient.

No wonder we opt for quick fixes and shortcuts in life, you know, that we live in a culture that offers us quick solutions. You know, it’s this relaxation that we desire, whether it’s relaxation techniques or soothing lattes or teas or oils. The temptation to self protect and self preserve and self medicate, is always there.

So when Jesus asks us to take His yoke, you know, it might seem like He’s adding affliction to the afflicted and therefore the pertinency of those words lies in that word, “My.” “Take My yoke.” You know, one of my favorite quotes of Pope Benedict XVI, um, in one of his general addresses is he says, What is this yoke that Jesus offers, which lightens instead of burdening, which uplifts instead of oppressing?

And then he concluded and said, It is nothing but the law of love. It is love. Love is the only standard. It is in this love, that Jesus is yoked to the father. It is in this love that Jesus embraced His passion in death on the cross. It is in this love that He overcame the burden of death by rising from the grave on the last day. It is in this love, and it is this love that calls us and invites us to surrender without fear.

You know, friends, when we surrender to such love, The lens through which we see God changes. We see God for who God is. God is not a killjoy who withholds something good from us. He’s not a tyrant who imposes his burdens on us. No, our God humbles himself like a beast of burden carrying upon his shoulders a kind of weight we could never, ever carry on our own.

On the cross, Jesus took our inconceivably, unbearably heavy yoke of sin and shame and condemnation and he gives us freely in exchange his life and his rest. It is this God that Simon of Cyrene encountered on the way to Calvary, where he allowed himself to carry the cross of Christ because he understood that Jesus was carrying the heavy burden, the heavier burden.

What Are Your Burdens? 

And so friends in this season, what are some of the burdens that you are carrying? You know, perhaps you’re struggling with the wounds of the past, maybe it’s a strain in relationships. Maybe it’s a mistake that you’ve committed that you just simply cannot forget. Maybe it’s a betrayal from a trusted friend.

Perhaps it’s financial difficulties, just you know, really just hoping from end to end. I don’t know if you’re a single parent. Sometimes there’s sickness, you know, challenges with health, not just of self, but also our loved ones. We live in a world where mental and psychological anguish is so much in the forefront and it’s found a common place.

That’s one thing though, you know, coming to Jesus doesn’t shield us from our afflictions friends, but rather it transforms them. It transformed, it transforms them, you know, from these fear producing, you know, fear dominating, anxiety producing, hopeless afflictions, these light and momentary troubles, as it says in Corinthians 4, 17 to 18 that are producing in us a weight of glory that is beyond compare.

God is at work in our season of weariness, God is not distant. He is the nearest in our season of weariness. And I know in my own life in that season, you know, though it began with a lot of, you know, sulking and self-pity, but because of the grace of God, it ended with new sight. You know, and I learned that Jesus has not berate me for being very, not as He defined me by the burdens I carry. The only expectation that Jesus had for me in that season was to just love and trust Him. You know, do I love the Lord? Like I say I do. Do I trust Jesus? 

You know, will I let go and let God be God? And I think for me, you know, in that season, if I hadn’t come to the point of surrendering, if I hadn’t uh, you know, had a teachable spirit, you know, if I was, uh, you know, not being able to be, you know, corrected, I would have found it very difficult for what was coming ahead.

I wouldn’t be prepared for what awaited me. In the months that followed, because in the months that followed, my husband lost his job. We had some plans for our daughter to study abroad, and that fell to the cracks. You know, my mother’s dementia advanced, our financial struggles escalated. But this time, there was something very beautiful in that season.

I was able to come without fear, without insecurity, and offer my weariness to Jesus. And there’s one thing that I learned there. I understood that to enter the rest of Christ, I must leave behind my pride and my self reliance. This fierce tendency to want to be in control, especially during difficult times.

And I learned that I didn’t need the tag of a good mother or a good wife or a good ministry leader to earn God’s favor. All I need is Jesus. All I need is Jesus. All I need to do is to allow Jesus to come in the places where He most desires to come. The place where fear and weariness abide.

And so friends, this rest that you and I so desperately long for, You know, has a name. His name is Jesus. And he says to you and me today, Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

That word easy is the Greek word “Chrestos”, which means well fitted. Jesus offers us a well fitted yoke. He doesn’t call us to a kind of rest that means inactivity or laziness that would lead to spiritual atrophy. No. He says, look, I know you. I have seen you. I know you. I have measured you. I have found a burden that is well fitted for you. I will not give you anything you cannot handle. All you have to do is come to me. And so today, will you come to Jesus? Jesus desires to carry your burdens. He desires to carry you. And so let’s pray.

Closing Prayer

Father, your word says in Psalms 46 verse 10, Be still and know that I am God. And sometimes it’s so difficult to be still when we are going through difficult times. There’s such a tendency for us to be in control. But we just want to bring ourselves before you just the way we are. Lord, you know, you know our weaknesses.

You know that sometimes we want to pretend that everything is okay, but you desire nothing more than to come to you with an open childlike heart, completely bare and completely vulnerable. And we just come before you, Lord, and I just give you my friends at this moment, especially those who are going through difficult, painful times in your life, have seasons of loss and deep, deep exhaustion.

Whatever it is they’re going through, Lord, whether it’s The weight of the present or the past or the future. We just give that to you at this moment. And at this moment, Jesus, I surrender. We bring to the foot of the cross any kind of lies we have believed that you are not good, that you are distant, that we are all alone, that you will bless everyone else but us.

All of those lies, Jesus, we renounce them at this moment in the name of Jesus. Whatever that is you’re grasping, trying to fix with your own strength, I encourage you to bring it to the foot of the cross. Receive the rest that Jesus brings. Receive the rest of Jesus. And Mama Mary, come become to you. Thank you, Mother, for carrying us through this journey and teaching us through your own life how to carry the yoke of Christ.

May they respond like you, may it be done to me according to your word and mother Mary at this moment. I ask for courage Especially for those who are going through very difficult times courage to make rest in Jesus a priority Courage to respond like you.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. All glory be to the Father and of the, son, and of the Holy Spirit , amen. Peace of Christ to you, friends and God bless you.

About Michelle Karen D’Silva

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