LIVING WATERS
For the proclamation of the Gospel and the edification of the Body of Christ
The True Rest of God
"There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his" (Hebrews 4:9-10).
It is this resting from their own work which many Christians call not understand. They think of it as a state of passive and selfish enjoyment, of still contemplation which leads to the neglect of till duties of life, and undermines the watchfulness and warfare to which Scripture calls.
Yet, this is an entire misunderstanding of God's call to rest. As the Almighty, God is the only source of power. In nature He works all. In grace He waits to work all too, if man will but consent and allow. Truly to rest in God is to yield oneself up to the highest activity. We work, because He worked in us to will and to do.
As Paul says of himself: "I labor, striving according to His working who worketh in me with might" (Col. 1:29). Entering the rest of God is the ceasing from self-effort, and the yielding up oneself in the full surrender of faith to God's working.
How many Christians are there who need nothing so much as rightly to apprehend this word. Their life is one of earnest effort and ceaseless struggling. They do long to do God's will, and to live to His glory. Continued failure and bitter disappointment is their too frequent experience. Very often as the result they give themselves up to a feeling of hopelessness: it never will be otherwise. Theirs is truly the wilderness life – they have not entered into God's rest.
Would that God might open their eyes, and show them Jesus as our Joshua, who has entered into God's presence, who sits upon the throne as High Priest, bringing us in living union with Himself into that place of rest and of love, and, by His Spirit within us, making that life of heaven a reality and an experience. (Andrew Murray).