"Restful," in my vocabulary, is as much about what it isn't than what it is.
"Restful" isn't inactivity.
Let me try explain.

As I type, my fingers are not inactive. They wait on instructions, each finger resting until my head tells it to move, and if they go quickly at my head's command, then there is alot less work and need for back-space use to re-type mistakes.
It isn't restless pecking and each finger frantically trying to type what it thinks needs to be said.

Fingers rest until called upon, and then they work together with the other members of my body and other fingers to have efficient results and accomplish the will of my head. Likewise, as members of the body of Christ, I want to contrast the franticness of churchgoers to that of restfulness.

Many churchgoers wait not. They rush in a panic to do what they perceive is the right move. "Lets try this" and "lets try that" all the while attaching noble reasons for the activity. Their own plan to do what they think that the Head wants done. But, they listen not, and their labor is in vain. Actually, their labor is destructive.

Try to play a piano with fingers that are so afflicted, and the melody will be lost. Try to type a blog with fingers so frantic, and it would be madness. Indeed, I doubt anybody would like a haircut from hands like that!!!

Restfulness is availability to all that the head would make available for us to do. And most importantly, it is a cessation of our endless attempts to act of our own accord whatever we think that the head would have us do.

I realize that one cannot simply do nothing all the time, so understand that we won't need explicit commands to tie our shoes or something like that. Rather, as we are active in the things that we have in our heart to do, restfulness takes the shape of an attitude to stop, or reverse coarse at a moments notice. All of this assumes a hearing heart and listening ears, and the willingness to be open to His nudges.

So holding our plans with open hands, not gripping tightly on any thing we do ... and waiting on the Lord ... is the essence of abiding and the thrust of what I want to discuss mostly at GraceHead. It is what I need the most encouragement about, and I assume that people that read this blog are in the same boat.

We have seen that the futility of the church's activity is the measure of how rest-less and busy the majority of the churched are in barren activities that were not from the Lord's prompting.