The Proverbs 31 Ministries Podcast

Meredith Brock:
Hi, friends. Thanks for tuning in to the Proverbs 31 Ministries podcast where we share biblical truth for any girl in any season. I'm your host, Meredith Brock, and I am here today with my co host and friend, the lovely Shae Hill.

Shae Hill:
Hey, Meredith. I always love hosting these conversations with you. It's one of the best parts of my job. So, guys, today we're joined by speaker and author Laura Smith, and she brings such a great scripture pack teaching on the topic of rest. Now, I know there's probably some life circumstances you're thinking of right now that make rest seem like something you'll have to get to one day, but I really want you to try and lean in here. I promise there's a takeaway for every single one of us, no matter what season we're in.

Meredith Brock:
That's right, Shae. The conversation was so incredibly helpful for me in my stage of life, and I know it was for you. And we have very different looking stages.

Shae Hill:
We do. Yeah. Don't we?

Meredith Brock:
So I'm so thankful that God meets us right where we are and truly provides rest for our weary souls no matter the stage or season of our life. And if you're looking for further guidance in this area, we'd love to share a resource with you called R.E.S.T, Rest, How to Overcome Being Overwhelmed. This very free resource will help you learn lean into scripture, your schedule, Sabbath, and surrender prayers instead of burning out in your very busy seasons. You can download your copy by visiting the link in our show notes.

Shae Hill:
Alright, friends. Let's dive into today's episode. We're excited to welcome our friend Laura Smith to the podcast today. Laura is a published author and speaker, and she aims to lead women to tear down lies so they can walk in God's truth. Laura, her husband, and their four kids live in a college town in Oxford, Ohio, where you can find her running, teaching Bible studies, or going on a sunset walk with her family.

Meredith Brock:
Well, that sounds delightful.

Shae Hill:
I like all of those things.

Meredith Brock:
I like all of those things as well. We're so excited to have Laura here. Her new book, The Urgency of Slowing Down Biblical Wisdom for Everyday Renewal, released just really recently. So we're super excited to hear from her today.

Laura, will you take it away?

Laura Smith:
Yeah. Thanks so much for having me on. Such an honor. So listen, I was talking to a friend the other day, and I just asked her how she was doing because that's what we do with our friends.

And her answer made me kind of laugh and cringe at the same time. She said, I feel like a street performer juggling a million balls, and, like, at any moment, they're all gonna come crashing down. And it makes us kinda giggle, but also that cringe because I think everyone out there can relate. I think we all feel like we're juggling a million balls. Right?

Like, we're taking care of our work and our volunteering and our family, and we're trying to care for our physical health and our mental health and our homes. And we're hopefully trying to find some time with Jesus. And we have all these balls that we're juggling, and it seems like our to dos have to dos, and we are ending each day feeling overwhelmed and depleted and exhausted. But that's not what Jesus wants for us. In John 10:10, he tells us why he actually came to the world, and he says, I came so that you can have life and have it to the full.

And some translations of that verse say, I have come so that you can have an abundant life. And he didn't mean full of stress and worry and to do's, and he didn't mean an abundance of anxiety and overwhelm. He meant a life full of love and joy and peace and an abundance of grace. So how do we go from feeling like we're overwhelmed to this abundant life Jesus invites us into. Because, honestly, if it means adding one more thing into our lives, I don't think we can do it.

But the good news is Jesus said, I have come so that you can have that abundant life. That means he came down to earth to understand what it was like to be a human. Like, if you are saying, yeah. That sounds great, but my job is so demanding. Jesus looks at us with kind of a half smile saying, yeah.

My job was to save the world, so I get you. And if we're saying, yeah, but we have all these relationships we're trying to mitigate, our kids are always bickering, or maybe our aunt and our cousin are always yelling at each other, and we always get caught in the middle, or maybe it's in the workplace or coworkers who are always kind of coming to you with their problems. Jesus says, yeah. Like, I know that's hard. I lived with the 12 disciples for three years.

And talk about some roommate situations. Right? Like, he had these 12 different men with these very different personalities. Some of them brothers, so bickering on their own there. But we see in scripture the disciples kind of elbowing for position and, asking Jesus this, and we see them kind of getting at each other sometimes.

So Jesus says, I understand what it's like to deal with relationships. And maybe you're like, I can't step into an abundant life because I am just on the go all the time. Whether that's your commute to work is long and hard, or you travel for work, or you feel like an Uber driver for your kids and you feel like your whole life is in the car, or maybe you're coming and going all the time with medical appointments to this clinic and for that test. Jesus says, yeah, I I get you. I was on the go for the last 3 years of my life, Never sleeping in the same town, never sleeping in my own bed.

I totally understand. So he says, yes, I understand what hard and demanding work looks like. Yes, I understand what navigating all the relationships look like. Yes. I understand what being on the go looks like, and I'm still inviting you into this abundant life.

Okay. So sign me up. How do we get it? The very next verse of John 10:10 says, I have come so that you can have life to the full. John 10:11 says, I am the Good Shepherd.

So the secret to this full and abundant life is letting Jesus be our good shepherd. I love when scripture echoes itself because it really gets my attention. It's like God saying to me, Laura, look at this. And when I hear Jesus say, I am the good shepherd, it immediately brings to mind for me Psalm 23, which is a favorite of so many. But this is a Psalm that David wrote, and he started out saying the Lord is my Shepherd.

He says the Lord is my Shepherd. I have everything I need. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul.

See, Jesus longs to restore our very souls, to restore us from the overwhelm and the exhaustion and the depletion, to invite us into an abundant life. But in order to do that, we have to let him be our good shepherd. Now I don't know about you, but I don't have any friends who are shepherds. I have a lot of friends in health care and education. And as a writer, I have a lot of writer friends, but I don't have any shepherd friends.

But David, who wrote this psalm, actually was a shepherd. And Jesus, in his time, would have known shepherds. Everyone who was listening to him would have known shepherds. So they would have had a better picture of what this meant. So I'm gonna step back for just a second and give us kind of a day in the life of a shepherd cliff notes version, spark notes version, so we can get a better feeling for what this means for letting Jesus be our good shepherd.

So a shepherd's main, like, thing in life was to get his sheep food and water and keep them safe and get them to rest. So a day in the life of a shepherd, the sheep might be grazing and eating some grass, and then the shepherd would be like, alright, guys. It's the heat of the day. You need to drink some water. You're gonna get dehydrated.

And in Israel, where Jesus and David both were, the terrain was really rocky and hilly. So the shepherd would be like, it's time to get some water. We've gotta travel some kind of rough terrain here to get to some water. So he would start leading the sheep, and they would follow him. And he'd be like, okay, guys.

Look. It's it's pretty steep here. I need you to stay back. I'll be a human railing for you, but you need to kinda stay back, and you need to go slow and be careful here. I don't want anyone to slip and fall.

And then they would make it to, some water, whether that was a stream or a a lake. And a good shepherd would be like, oh, hey, sheep. I know you're thirsty, but this water actually looks contaminated. So even though you want it and you're thirsty, we're not gonna have this. We're gonna we're gonna keep going until we find some good water.

And he would keep going until he found water that would actually quench their thirst. And then at the end of a day, a good shepherd would herd all of his sheep into a pen or what was more likely a cave in Jesus and David's time. And, oh, look, one of the sheep ran off. Probably every night, one of them probably ran off. And so the good shepherd, we're told, leaves the 99 to go get the 1.

And he would scoop her up and pull the burrs out of her wool and hold her close until her little sheep heart stopped beating so fast. And then he would put her back with the flock where she would be safe. And once all the sheep were in their cave or their pin, a good shepherd would actually lay down as a human gate in between the sheep and everything else, not so much as to pin the sheep in, but as to keep evil out. The good shepherd was basically saying no one and nothing gets to my sheep unless they come through me. And that's who Jesus is for us.

He actually laid down his life for us. And the secret to the abundant life, the secret to letting him restore our soul is by letting him be our good shepherd, by following him. And I'm guessing most people listening are Christians if they're listening to Proverbs 31 podcast, and they're saying, yeah. Jesus is my shepherd. I follow him.

And if this is the first time that you've heard about Jesus or about him being your good shepherd, I can't wait to tell you more about he how he longs to restore your soul, how he has this abundant life for you. So keep listening. But I think most of us would say, yes, we follow Jesus, until we don't. Because there are times when Jesus says, hey. This ledge is steep.

Stay away from it. And we say, we're big girls. We can just take a peek. We'll be fine. Or when Jesus says, slow down.

Like, I want you to do this cautiously. And we are just full steam ahead because we know what we want and we know how we wanna get it, so we keep going and don't listen. And there are times when we get to something and Jesus says, you know what? This water, not for you. And we say, yep.

But we're thirsty, but it looks good to me. And so we consume the thing, the substance, the show, hang out with the people, whatever that we know our good shepherd says isn't good for us. The good news is we have a good shepherd who, every time we stray, comes after us and scoops us up. And we have the choice to kick and scream or to let him hold us and bring us back in to soul restoration and the abundant life. The second line of Psalm 23 says, I have everything I need.

It says, the Lord is my shepherd. I have everything I need. If we follow him, we will have everything we need, except for some of us are shaking our heads and saying, everything? Because I need some more money in my banking account, and I need to be healed. And I need that person to listen to me.

And I need to lose five pounds, and I need to get my hair done, and I really need a nap. But the thing about Jesus is he doesn't tell us that we'll get everything we want when we follow him, but he promises that we'll have everything we need, that we'll have an abundant life. We see this in scripture time and time again to a blind man who needed sight. Jesus gave the gift of sight. To a hungry crowd, he gave an all you can eat buffet of fish and breadsticks with 12 baskets of leftovers.

To a woman thrown naked into an angry crowd, he gave compassion and protection because that's what she needed. And we see it in our own lives again and again too. If we ask our good shepherd, Jesus will give us the words for a hard conversation. He'll give us a way out. He'll give us peace that surpasses understanding.

He'll open doors for us or send a friend just when we need them. He gives us everything we need. The next line of Psalm 23 says he makes me lie down in green pastures. And isn't that the truth? Our good shepherd has to make us lie down in green pastures because we're dumb sheep, and we won't lie down unless he makes us.

We are just zooming and scrolling and speeding through life so fast in this hustle culture that we live in that we forget to rest. But it is urgent that we slow down so our good shepherd can restore our very souls. But our culture keeps telling us, hey, you need to cook like Bobby Flay, and you need to have your house look like Joanna Gaines decorated it. And me, personally, I'm in my fifties, so I'm told, oh, you should look like Jennifer Aniston. And if we try to achieve these things that culture is telling us we need to achieve or have or do.

It's just more and more balls that we're juggling, and we just become more and more exhausted. We think we need to just throw in one more load of laundry and just watch one more episode and just shoot one more email, and our good shepherd is saying, I want you to lie down. I want you to rest because when I make you lie down in green pastures, this is where I can actually restore your soul. I love how Jesus actually does this in Mark 6. We see him.

The disciples have just gone out on a ministry tour, and Jesus has actually sent them out to do work, which is a really good reminder that work comes from God. That at the very beginning in the Garden of Eden, God gave Adam and Eve good work to tend the garden before there was ever any sin. So Jesus isn't telling us, you shouldn't tend to the things you need to do. Jesus is actually saying that there's tons of stuff I need you to do, that I want you to do, that I'm calling you to do, that I'm equipping you to do. I want you to go out there and do it, and then I want you to come rest so that you can go back out there and do those things again.

The sheep were gonna lie down in green pastures for a bit, but the next day, they were gonna have to climb those rocky hills again. And in Mark 6, starting in verse 30, the apostles returned to Jesus from their ministry tour and told him all they had done and taught. Then Jesus said, let's go off by ourselves to a quiet place and rest a while. He said this because there were so many people coming and going that Jesus and his apostles didn't even have time to eat. So they left by boat for a quiet place where they could be alone.

There's so much to unpack here. So Jesus sent them out to the ministry tour. He gave them this work, and then he calls them into rest. He said, let's go off by ourselves and rest well. He saw the need for that, for these unforced rhythms of grace, of work and rest and work and rest.

He said this because they hadn't even had time to eat. And can I just have an amen out there somewhere for that? For all of us who are eating breakfast, standing up as we are packing up our things or our kids' things for the day, as we are eating lunch or dinner at our desk or in the car or at one of our kids' games. And lunch. Some days, we even forget that we were supposed to eat lunch, and we're just digging around in our purse and so grateful that we find that mushy granola bar at the bottom of our purse.

We're thankful that we find it and also a little skeptical, not sure if it's safe to eat. It just reminds me so much that Jesus totally gets us. And so they leave for a boat by a quiet place where they could be alone, and goodness, I just picture the disciples on the boat. Some of them just nodding off, taking a nap, and resting their head on Jesus' shoulder or his lap. They're exhausted from the traveling and the work they've been doing.

Some of them talking nonstop, just saying, Jesus, we met this person, and we healed this person, and we did this, and this crowd got angry, and what should we have done here? And just processing with him. This is called prayer when we process with Jesus. See, Jesus invited the disciples in the boat with him because he knows sometimes what we need more than anything to restore our souls is a nap and a snack and some time with him. So they are on the boat.

They're have they're eating and drinking some water and resting and praying. That's talking to Jesus. And then this is what happens. But many people recognize them and saw them leaving. This is in verse 33.

And people from many towns ran ahead along the shore and got there ahead of them. Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat. Oh my goodness. I think we can all relate. That moment we finally sit down with maybe a mug of tea and a good book and someone calls or texts who needs us, or that moment when we think we can finally take a hot bath or shower by ourselves and our toddler wanders into the bathroom because they have something so, so important to tell us, Jesus totally gets that because he was always in demand.

But here's the thing, when he steps from the boat, he had compassion on the crowd because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things. And 2 things there. 1, Jesus is our shepherd all the time. No matter what's going on, he's never too busy for us.

And the second thing is, as a human at that time, he was God in human form, he knew he needed to rest in order to do his work well. So he had been working and the apostles had been working. They'd been on this ministry tour. They took this lovely time in the boat to lay down in green pastures to restore their souls. And then it was so easy for him to have compassion on the crowd and teach them because he was coming from a place of rest.

And immediately after this, we see that the crowd is hungry, and Jesus feeds this huge crowd and has the disciples help the help him do that. And they can because they are coming from a place of rest. This is what Jesus invites us into. Good work, rest. Good work, rest.

And we can do the good work he calls us to when we rest. But the rest is so important, and I think we're all cheating ourselves from it as we tell everyone that we're crazy busy and that sleep is overrated. But rest is where the restoration happens. This is where Jesus restores our souls. You can't even spell restore without rest.

It's when we lie down in green pastures that we feel the warmth of the sun on our face, that we notice that still water next to us so we can drink and have our thirst quenched. It's when we lie down in green pastures that we notice the songs of birds and the beauty of wildflowers. That's where our souls are restored. The end of Psalm 23 tells us, surely goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life. It doesn't say when I get the promotion or when I'm healed or when I get my act together.

It doesn't say when I'm engaged or when I'm pregnant or next year. It it says, surely, god's goodness and love is following me all the days of my life. That mean, Christ's goodness and love is following me today. It's following you today. It's following us tomorrow.

It's following us every day, but it's urgent that we slow down so that we notice it. He's inviting us into this abundant life because he's our good shepherd, and he only has goodness and love for us. If we trust him and talk to him and follow him, Jesus will help us find rest. And in that rest, we'll be more aware of the goodness and love he has for us. Our very souls will be restored.

Meredith Brock:
Wow. That is a reminder that this mother of three needed to hear today. Thank you so much for reminding us of, the truths in scripture that we can really hold onto and anchor ourselves in as we feel, the world around us just swirling and demanding more and more of us. And as you were teaching, I was just reflecting on a couple things. One is, I think there are seasons when I hear you talk about restoration and peace and that abundant life and lying down.

I'm like, yes. Give it to me. That is what I want. That is absolutely what I desire in my life. And then I look at the reality of my life, and I'm like, wow, I, you know, I've given up on trying to make my house look like Joanna Gaines.

It's not gonna happen, guys.

Laura Smith:
Same. Same.

Meredith Brock:
Three kids, a dog, two cats. It's just it's not gonna happen.

It's not gonna happen. I've given up on, you know, like, I've had to let go of. I shouldn't say I've given up on, but I've had to let go of some expectations that I had placed on myself even in regards to friendship in this season of my life. I'm in the thick of parenting. And that's my assignment right now is to parent my children well and to to love my husband well.

And so, you know, the my friendships tend to be I can only really stay in relationship with people who are flexible with my assignment right now. You know?

Laura Smith:
For sure.

Meredith Brock:
And so my question for you is, I find myself in a place where, like, quite legitimately, you know, I've got a 4 year old. He's he's dynamic.

That's what we'll call him. He's enthusiastic. That's what actually the best way to describe him. And he he still loves to wake up in the middle of the night. He's gonna come into my room and and wake me up, or he's gonna cry out to me, not for reasons of being naughty, but he has particular needs that need to be met.

And so it is my assignment in this part of my life to go and comfort him in the middle of the night and be with him, which means setting aside my physical needs sometimes. You know? And so my question for you is, I would love for you to define, truly define according to a biblical perspective, what is an abundant life?

Laura Smith:
Yeah. No. That's good. Now first of all, I just hope everyone's listening just acknowledges, yeah, we all have demands, and I think Jesus made that very clear. He had demands on him, even in that Mark 6 passage before and after the boat. People were literally following him around all the time.

He was always in demand, and still he found time to rest with the father by being creative, quite frankly. That time it was to get into a boat because that was the only way he was gonna get alone with with the Father. The abundant life is truly an abundant of the abundance of the fruit of the spirit.

It's an abundance of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, faithfulness, and self control. That's the abundant life. And I think any of us, if we're asked, do you want an abundance of love in your life? Yeah. Do you want an abundance of peace in your life?

Yes. An abundance of faithfulness. Like, if you ask anybody any of those things, yes. That's actually the abundant life they want.

I think culture tells us the opposite. Culture tells us the abundant life is more followers and more money and more things. But anyone who's ever experienced that know that none of those things actually bring you love or joy or peace.

Meredith Brock:
That's so good. I couldn't have said it better, honestly, that that I think right there is we have to have a paradigm shift. Our culture has so inundated us with this idea that the abundant life, that lying down in green pastures means I will suddenly be comfortable.

Shae Hill:
Right. Right.

Meredith Brock:
I'll suddenly I'll suddenly have no obstacles. I'll suddenly no longer have to sacrifice myself on behalf of other people, because I'll just be lying down in a green pasture. You know, and I think we miss it in the western church sometimes, what the abundant life really is. And I'm I'm preaching to myself right now because I am in that season where the demands are very, very high and I could allow myself to slip into, what I would call a little bit of self pity. Guys, I would go there and be like, this is just hard.

I don't wanna do this anymore. Everybody stop asking for things, you know. Like, I can't

Laura Smith:
I think we've all been there.

Meredith Brock:
Yeah. Right. Right? And and honestly, I'm like like, rightly so. The demands don't stop from the time my eyeballs open until that time my eyeballs close. And even when my eyeballs are closed, someone needs me.

You know? And I don't want to miss what God has for me in this season of of self sacrifice, in this season. This is the assignment that he gave me right now. He gave me these 3 beautiful children. He gave me the assignment of being the CEO of Proverbs 31 Ministries.

I don't wanna miss what he has for me right now. So lying down in green pastures for me, walking in the abundant life for me looks a lot more like saying, Jesus, I can't do this without you. I need you desperately. Please show up today and not trying to do it in my own strength, not trying to do it in my own cleverness, in making, which I can do, I would like to say.

I want everyone to know that I am excellent at making a schedule. Yes. You know, and I can build spreadsheets to accomplish this and that, but even in all that planning and trying to create space, sometimes we can miss the point of what God is trying to do in our lives, and that is to show us what the true abundant life is, which is the fruit of the spirit. It is that peace, patience, self control, joy, all of those things that can only be found in dependence on the Holy Spirit.

And so this is just such a powerful teaching and so helpful for so many.

Shae Hill:
Yeah. It's so good. And, Laura, I just wanna say, I'm so thankful that you're the person bringing this, this message to our listeners today because you have so many things going on in your life that makes me feel like what you're saying is believable, you know. It sounds like you have a lot of people, not just in your life, but also in your home.

And you you're not just a mom and a wife, but you're also you also work and you're pursuing things. And I know I mean, a lot of our listeners are are in that same season. And I love how you pointed out that, our work is not really, like, the enemy of rest. You didn't, like, separate those two things. And I know statistics show, that most households today have 2 working parents, which means that they're they're just like you.

They're just like Meredith. They're working moms. And so I wanted to know if our work really can be a worship, like an act of worship, what have you what has changed about the way that you work when you return from, you know, resting? Like, what what what changes about our work when our soul is truly at rest? What have you noticed in yourself that's changed about your work?

Laura Smith:
That's an awesome question, Shay. And I think it speaks to, like, Meredith crying out, like, sometimes this is hard. Sometimes it is hard. It's work. Right?

But this is the cool thing. If we actually accept that invitation of rest, for me, that means sabbathing once a week and literally not working for a full day every week, and like turning off my social media, turning off my email. I work out of the house. I have an office in the house, so closing the door to my office, which seems counterintuitive to us when we have a million things to do. But what happens is then the day after my Sabbath, I am more focused, I am more clear headed, I have more energy, and I get more done in a shorter amount of time.

Because listen, Jesus longs to restore our souls. He invites us into this unforced rhythms of grace. Sabbath is something that's mentioned a 142 times in the bible. He wants us to rest, and it's a gift for us. And I think what we think and what we see all around us is not only do you have to have a job, but you have to have a side hustle, and you have all those things.

And if you just stayed up longer and if you just woke up earlier and maybe had one more shot of espresso, you'd be able to get through it all. But what happens is there's there's only a certain point where we're still creative, where we're still focused, where we're still present before our brains just can't handle anymore. And the rest actually helps me do the work so much better. It helps me be more present with my family. It helps me, I am a creative, and I just I have so many more ideas.

They flow so much more easily. And so when I rest, I actually do the work so much better.

Shae Hill:
That's great. I think that's a really big encouragement to someone today who maybe their church has been talking about Sabbath or the practice of Sabbath, or maybe they've even, like, dipped their toes into a book or a podcast about it, and they're like, that is just not realistic for my life right now. But I what I'm hearing you say is, it is.

And it's it's a discipline to keep and it's a rhythm to pursue. And, when we prioritize that, the Lord, works in that. You know? It's not like we're peacing out on all of our responsibilities, but I I like how you're saying it is saying, like, this can wait. You know?

I am choosing to prioritize time with my family, time with the Lord, time for him to really speak to me so that, you know, not that I can escape from the work, but so that I can return to the work, with my soul in a more in a more restful place. So thank you so much for sharing that. Again, I'm just so thankful for the message that you brought today, Laura. You've been so generous to share with us and our listeners. And as we wrap up today, I just wanna make sure again that people know, that if they enjoyed today's conversation or they're feeling convicted like I am, I'm definitely the double shot of espresso, you know, kind of friend.

So I'm I'm feeling convicted today. Thank you for the truths that you brought. And so I know people would definitely enjoy the book that you just released, The Urgency of Slowing Down Biblical Wisdom for Everyday Renewal. So make sure you grab a copy of that. And then also, our listeners can stay connected with you are on social media by searching at Laura Smith author.

Meredith Brock:
Also friends, you know, we love giving you resources that help you take further action on what you hear on the podcast. So I wanted to make sure you knew about our free resource we put together called R.E.S.T, How to Overcome Being Overwhelmed. This resource will help you develop a rhythm of reading scripture, evaluating your schedule like we talked about, practicing Sabbath, and trusting in God. Download your copy by visiting the link in our show notes.

Shae Hill:
I think that's all for today, friends. Thanks so much for tuning in. Here at Proverbs 31 Ministries, we believe when you know the truth and live the truth, it changes everything.