St. Augustine said in his book, Confessions, "You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in You."
Confessions is Augustine's chronicling of his personal conversion to Christ--the sin, the struggles, the witness of his mother, Monica, his education, and how God got his attention through this. Worthy reading!
After all these struggles, and hearing Ambrose, a preacher that he respected and could admire for not only his teaching but his strong rhetoric and thinking, Augustine heard these words (from God), "Take and read; take and read." He opened the Bible to a passage that told him how he was striving in many things to find God, and yet did not. And how, he needed to give it all up for God and would find rest. Augustine did not read the passage; the passage read him--his life, his sin, his striving in all the wrong places, his wrong priorities.
13 Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. 14 But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires. (Romans 13:13-14, ESV, www.biblegateway.com)
Reminds me of the struggle of the writer of Ecclesiastes, who tried all the "peak" experiences of life--tried to find fulfillment and peace, and yet found emptiness in everything but God alone.
Augustine meant peace and rest IN THIS LIFE--not just eternal peace and rest when one dies and goes to heaven and the life after earthly life.
Do you have a restless heart? Are you trying to find peace and fulfillment in anything but God? Augustine would say, "You will not find that, my friend." The rest, the peace, the true joy in life is found in a personal relationship with the God who is seeking you--the God who loves you eternally--the God who can allow for peace through other experiences of life, after one has found God who gives rest.
Your heart will be restless until you find your rest in Him. So "take and read" and see whether you see your self in God's Word, the Bible.
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