“Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him.  Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken.  My salvation and my honor depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge.  Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge.  Surely the lowborn are but a breath, the highborn are but a lie.  If weighed on a balance, they are nothing; together they are only a breath.  Do not trust in extortion or put vain hope in stolen goods; though your riches increase, do not set your heart on them. One thing God has spoken, two things I have heard: ‘Power belongs to you, God, and with you, Lord, is unfailing love’; and, ‘You reward everyone according to what they have done.’ ” (Ps. 62: 6-12).

In times of stress, despair or loneliness God is a refuge.  It is rest and peace to trust in Him for all our needs, and as David recommends, “pour out your heart to Him, for He is our refuge.” God knows all our needs, physical, spiritual, and emotional.  In their wilderness wanderings Israel was given Manna from heaven for their food.  When they complained that the angels food was inadequate, God gave them quail until they were gorged upon it.  Yeshua fed five thousand and three thousand of those following Him, because He had compassion on them in that remote area.

The words of Yeshua are the word of God that brought spiritual life to so many who sought Him out, as well as those Yeshua found himself.  For example, the Samaritan woman, who received spiritual renewal along with her entire town who believed in Yeshua upon hearing Him.  Of Yeshua, they said, no one speaks as he does with authority. Zacheaus was one who had a spiritual and emotional renewal because Yeshua saw and met his spiritual and emotional need.  Mary anointed and washed Yeshua’s feet because of the spiritual deliverance she had received.  Yeshua saw all the needs people had and He supplied what was lacking.  Nicodemus needed understanding and Yeshua explained how faith was not dependent on human reasoning and rationalization.  The signs in the sky and invisible forces of wind are real and true even though they can not be manipulated by man.  The fathers who sought healing and deliverance for their children were in great emotional need that could not be met, but by God alone.

Everyone of us daily has need for physical, spiritual and emotional wellbeing.  God understands this and He made us to be dependent upon Him, not like an addict looking for the next fix, but out of and through relationship with Him, we are sustained, supplied, restored, renewed, filled, fed, grow, mature and have our being.  This is the wholeness for which we were created.  It is life, and more, it is the rest and peace we so desperately desire.  In C.S. Lewis’ book, The Screw tape Letters, Wormwood, a chief demon, describes Hell as a place of constant noise.  “Music and silence — how I detest them both! … no square inch of infernal space [Hell] and no moment of infernal time has been surrendered to either of those abominable forces, but all has been occupied by Noise — Noise, the grand dynamism, the audible expression of all that is exultant, ruthless, and virile … We will make the whole universe a noise in the end.”  This conveys in contrast and in the opposite, so clearly our need to be shepherded by the Lord, to lie down in green pastures and have our souls restored.

“This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it.’ ” (Isaiah 30:15).  Let all believers in Yeshua Messiah say we will have all of this from the Lord’s hand. For there is no other God and no other source of life.  God’s Kingdom is about righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

This is the relationship of trust and faith that Yeshua had with His Father God.  “The Sovereign Lord has given me a well-instructed tongue, to know the word that sustains the weary.  He wakens me morning by morning, wakens my ear to listen like one being instructed.  The Sovereign Lord has opened my ears; I have not been rebellious, I have not turned away.  I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting.  Because the Sovereign Lord helps me, I will not be disgraced.  Therefore have I set my face like flint, and I know I will not be put to shame.” (Isaiah 50: 4-7).  He is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.” (Eph. 3: 20-21).