Lord, Let Your Rest Seep Deeply Into My Soul

Are you so exhausted that you can’t get out of your own way? Do you feel like you can’t cope and can’t handle the overwhelm? If so, you know you need rest–but not just a little rest. You need the rest of God to seep deeply into your soul.

When you’re beyond exhausted, you need more than surface-level rest.

Your soul, which consists of your mind, will, and emotions, acts like parched earth that is dry and cracked. When you first start resting after a long period of trauma or exhaustion, the rest feels like it runs through the cracks. It doesn’t seem to fix the exhaustion, at least at first.

Of course, any amount of rest does help, but you have to rest awhile—often a few weeks—before the resting starts to actually heal your soul.

The real soul rest starts happening when your “fight or flight” instinct calms down.

When you go a long time without the rest you need, your body runs on adrenaline. Your mind, will, and emotions go into survival mode as well–like a mental adrenaline. You’re in the “fight or flight” rush just to survive.

Related: Prophetic Dream: You Need Sanctuary, Not Just Rest

However, your body, soul, and spirit can’t sustain that status for the long term.

When you finally decide to rest, it takes awhile for that fight-or-flight instinct to calm down. Often, when it does calm down and the adrenaline rush starts to leave your body, you will suddenly start falling asleep everywhere.

You might even be sleeping 7-8 hours at night, so you can’t figure out why you’re suddenly starting to nod off everywhere: riding in the car, sitting in church, watching TV.

It’s because your body’s fight-or-flight adrenaline rush has started to calm down, and the cracked earth of your soul has started to actually absorb some of the rest.

When you’re at that point, you’re finally at the part of the trauma response that allows you to begin recovery from the traumatic, extended dependence on adrenaline that has kept you alive and going … sometimes going for years.

Personally, on the day I’m writing this prayer, I’ve been trying to rest for several weeks–but have only in the last few days gotten to the point where my fight-or-flight is calming down.

This means the real rest has only just begun. But every day, I can feel the parched earth of my soul absorb a little more water. It feels amazing. It feels like I’m walking around in a deep, sleepy bubble of molasses.

Well, anything amazing gets even better with prayer. 🙂

I have been praying that the Lord would help me rest and give me rest, as Jesus said He would do in Matthew 11:28-30:

“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light” (Matthew 11:28-30 NKJV).

And I know the Lord has been giving me rest. It’s simply a process, and not a short one, at that.

So I thought it would be good to begin praying for the Lord to make His rest seep deeply down into my soul. And as soon as I prayed that, I felt even MORE of that beautiful, sleepy, calmy, resty molasses feeling. And I believe the Lord began answering my prayer right away.

Are you in the same place, where you need the Lord to soften up the parched, exhausted mud of your soul?

Do you need Him to personally minister His rest to you–and minister it to you deeply? Do you need Him to help you embrace and receive rest, and to never stop resting?

If you need deeper soul rest, pray this with me:

“Dear Heavenly Father, I come before You in Jesus’ name.

Abba Father, thank You that I can come boldly before Your throne of grace, where I may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Thank You that Your mercies are new every day.

Thank You also that precious Jesus says to me that I can come to Him when I am weary and heavy laden, and He (and You!) will give me rest. Thank You, Father.

Father, I praise You for giving me rest.

I praise You and worship You for who You are, and for everything You have done and are doing for me. You are taking care of me when I have had no strength to care for myself at all.

I am not surprised about this, Father, for You always take care of me; but I praise You and thank You for it anyway.

Father, You have been giving me so much rest lately–and I thank You. But I have come to recognize, during this rest, how dry and worn out I really was. I feel so much better when I am rested, and I see more every day of how different the rested life is from the stressing life.

So Lord, I want to ask You today for help in resting more deeply.

Lord God of Heaven and earth, and my precious Savior Jesus, would You please let Your rest seep deeply into my soul today?

And not only that, but would You also please bring Your rest to seep and saturate deeply into my body, heart, and spirit, as well as my soul (mind, will, and emotions)?

I’ve been in ‘fight or flight’ so long, Father, and I seem to be an awful lot like parched, dried-out, cracked mud. The water runs down into cracked mud without softening the surface.

I don’t want to be dry like this, Lord. My body needs rest. But I need You to soften the ground of my body, soul, and spirit so that Your rest can sink in and soften me up.

Abba Father, please let Your healing rain fall on me today:

• Let it be a gentle, healing rain that doesn’t just run off, but which soaks and saturates me to the core of my being.
• Let every part of me that was toughened or wizened or sustained by adrenaline become soft, supple, and absorbent in Your healing rain.
• Let the cracks in the “mud” of my body, soul, and spirit close up and fill in as You saturate me with Your rest.

O Lord, You have been giving me rest. Thank You. But I know I can rest more deeply if You help me.

I know there’s a process, but I submit to Your process. I am simply asking You to burn and drip and sear and wash Your healing rest deeply into every fiber, crack, pore, cell, proton, neutron, and every other part of my being.

Open me up to Your rest as only You can do, and teach me to rest Your way.

Thank You, Abba Father. Thank You, Jesus, for not only giving me rest but also for being my Rest. You are my Sabbath rest; You are the Shepherd of my soul. Thank You.

In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.”

Everybody needs rest, my friend. Just don’t stop resting too soon.

I know it is hard to rest sometimes. I feel like a poster child for “it’s hard to rest.” However, friend, the Lord will help us and give us rest when we come to Him. We just have to realize that deep rest can be a long process, and we must not cut off the process too soon.

Have you been in “fight-or-flight”? Did this prayer for deep rest resonate with you today? Did you pray the prayer? If so, leave a comment below!