The Rest Is Up To You!

By John Stallings

—Let us therefore fear lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it. Heb.4:1

What comes to mind when you think of rest?

The weekend? A day at the beach? Sleeping late in the morning? Retirement? Some would see these things as boring while others would see them as heavenly.If you've attended a funeral lately, I’m sure you heard the word rest used a lot. If you've walked through a grave yard recently you’ll know the words “Rest in Peace--RIP” are on almost every tombstone.The use of the word rest associated with death means that the person’s labors have come to an end. The troubles of the world and the illnesses that may have caused the deceased persons death are now over. The stillness of death gives the impression of rest.

A SPIRITUAL REST

The writer of Hebrews, in chapter four introduces a different kind of rest, a spiritual rest. The Bible depicts the life & experience of a Christian as a journey or pilgrimage wherein we’re called upon to leave a world system & come under the headship of Jesus Christ. As we follow Christ we come more & more into a rest which He provides for us.

One might easily conclude that the Bible is all about work and no play, because it speaks negatively about sloth and idleness and positively about labor and work. Yet Jesus spoke often about the need to rest.

Indeed when His disciples returned from ministry he encouraged them to come aside to a deserted place and rest awhile.Some folk are never at rest because they’re always bothered by something. The only way we’ll ever truly experience the life God has for us is to enter into His Rest.I know whereof I speak because I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit, not in total chaos & tumult, but neither in the true perfect resting place of God’s love & mercy.

In a day of labor-saving technology it seems we’re more stressed than ever. We’d do well to remember that we can only wind life so tight, and then it breaks.

ZONE OF REST

What I’ve learned & am learning is that the desired place God wants us to live & where we’ll be most fruitful is a zone called His Rest.There are three influences that exert pressure on us; the world, the flesh & the devil. Each of these influences is seeking to do one thing; to pull us out of God’s Rest. If you are doing kingdom work & contending for kingdom principles, the enemy is trying to get at you at every turn.God’s rest is a place where an individual is established in Christ & does not run from philosophy to philosophy. God’s rest is a place of quietness, peace, stillness, & freedom from guilt, where we rest from whatever seeks to disturb us or cause us to worry. It’s a cessation from endless legalistic activity & relaxing in God. It is to be settled & secure. It is having absolute faith & trust that God will supply all our needs. It’s knowing we can lean & rely on God for support no matter what may come.

Hebrews chapter four actually opens with a warning focused on this rest.—

Let us therefore fear lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.

It’s important to note the rest spoken of here is different than other kinds of rests in scripture. It’s called-“The rest that remains.” This rest isn’t the Sabbath day or the seventh day rest, a pattern of God’s rest on the seventh day after creation.

Hebrews 4:11 tells us to,--Labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.It sounds like an oxymoron, to speak of “laboring to enter God’s rest,” but it isn’t.

Jesus said …Come unto me all ye that labor & are heavy laden & I will give you rest.” Then He says, Take my yoke upon you & learn of me for I am meek & lowly of heart & you shall find rest unto your souls.

REST ISN'T ACHIEVED BY LEAVING A SET OF BAD CIRCUMSTANCES.

Some people think they can find rest & peace by relocating. They will leave a job, a marriage, a
city or even a country thinking if they can go somewhere else they’ll find happiness & rest. This of course is just an illusion.Human beings are restless by nature.

Have you ever seen people walking down a Mall talking on their cell-phone? They’re one place but they want to be somewhere else. We go out, and then we can’t wait to get home. When we get home we can’t wait to leave to be somewhere else.We take vacations to rest but unless we have a resting heart & spirit a vacation won’t work. We've all had the experience of coming home from an extended get-away & as soon as our hand touches the door-knob the old pressure is still there. We took it with us & brought it back.

Israel thought if they could throw off slavery they would be happy but it wasn’t long until they started grumbling & wanting to go back to Egyptian bondage rather than press into the Promised Land, or rest God had for them.

This would be a good place to remind ourselves of a group of powerful & prominent leaders in the Bible. Because they are so prominent in Israel’s history without question you’ll be familiar with their names; Shamma, Shaphat, Igal, Palti, Gaddiel, Gaddi, Ammiel, Sethur, Nahbi & Guel. These names are household words in every Christian home in America, right? Nope! Hardly. Only if we add the two last names to the list, Joshua & Caleb, will it make sense.

These are the names of the twelve men sent out by Moses to survey the land of Promise. Isn’t it amazing that of these twelve princes, each the head of his own tribe governing thousands of men, the names of ten are lost in obscurity in a list tucked away in the book of numbers? Only two of the twelve are household names, immortalizations of greatness & fame.Ten leaders were a dismal failure; dragging a whole generation down with them, but two, Joshua, & Caleb were paragons of victory & success. What made the difference? The ten spies failed to believe God would do what he said he’d do. They didn’t mix faith in God with their so-called knowledge so they never entered into God’s best, or God’s rest.

God had this & other stories recorded for our edification & as examples to us. The same rest He urged His people to press into & possess is still available to us but we can only enter into it by faith.

A rest is available to us & we should make every effort to enter into that rest. Ancient Israel failed to do so & God is showing us why & how we might avoid making the same mistake they did. If we don’t press into God’s rest, we’ll do essentially what Israel did & wander around rootless, never experiencing God’s best for our lives.

HERE ARE THE INGREDIENTS OF GOD”S REST:

1. When we are residing in God’s rest, we are seeing things from His perspective, not ours.

We began to see our problems as small because God is with us. When we are resting with God we know that anything is possible because we have “Big time back-up.”When we are in God’s rest we won’t make decisions based on fear. We won’t worry & fret because we’re seeing things differently now. Resting in God is surrender where we don’t try to do things on our own without Him.

2. When we are in God’s rest we hear from Him more often.

Recently we were praying about an issue, not a life altering one but nonetheless important. You know how it can be; you just keep circling the same mountain never seeming to hit on a satisfying answer. During a week-end out of town, we visited with relatives and minister friends and as we were relaxing, not really trying to find an answer to our problem, the answered snapped into focus.

Over and over again life has taught me that the clarity of thinking necessary to find the proper course of action comes only after we’ve had the chance to rest and be renewed. When you and I are working from a place of exhaustion we can get trapped into short-sightedness when God is able to shower us with wisdom if we’ll only take the time to pull away, put our conundrum on the back burner and give Him an opportunity to speak to us.

When we’re having panic attacks it’s harder for God to reach us. God wants to talk to us but we must be listening to Him. The world around us provides static that blocks God out unless we intentionally tune Him in & keep Him at the forefront of our minds. When we are resting in God we give Him the opportunity to do things we’d never be able to do on our own.When we rest in the power of God, we start to see His power actualized in our lives.

CERTAIN PEOPLE

One of my favorite passages on rest & peace is in Acts 12:1-15. Listen to it;

Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hand to vex certain of the church. Did you get that; he vexed certain of the church?

The devil doesn’t vex or bother everyone in the church; at least he doesn’t bother them all to the same extent. If Satan sees us as a threat he will do all he can to vex us. If we’ve made a deep commitment to God, there’s a bulls-eye on our back.

And he killed James the brother of John with the sword.—vr.2And because he saw it pleased the Jews he proceeded further to take Peter also. [Then were the days of the unleaven bread.]Vr. 3And when he had apprehended him he put him in prison & delivered him to four quarter ions of soldiers, intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people. Vr.4And Peter therefore was kept in prison but prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him.And when Herod would have brought him forth, the same night Peter was sleeping between two soldiers bound with two chains & the keepers before the door kept the prison.

This has to be one of the Bible’s most prefect pictures of rest. James had been killed by a sword & now Peter has been arrested & awaits the same fate. But is he screaming & crying? No! Is he telling God how He’s let him down? No! Peter is sleeping. Can you imagine that? Would you & I be sleeping in a circumstance like that? I can’t speak for you but in my case I strongly doubt it. But Peter is resting in the hands of God. We could find no greater example of God’s rest than this.Then because Peter’s trust was in God & the people of God were praying for him, he was miraculously delivered by an angel. Here’s one of the most restful thoughts I’ve ever embraced;

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5:8…to be absent from the body is to be present with Christ.

That being true, what’s the worst thing that could happen to us? If we die we’re immediately ushered into Christ’s presence. I’m sure that promise is what gave Peter such peace that night in prison. So, if we’re looking at death as the worst calamity that could befall us, all death could do is take us away from the asphalt & concrete streets we trod & upgrade us to the golden streets of Glory.

In 1967 I had my first experience in flying over an ocean. I’d flown domestically many times since childhood but this time I was going with a group of ministers to visit several foreign countries, including Israel.I boarded a plane in Orlando, headed for New York. I was so green at flying that when the plane started banking to land in New York, I leaned back the opposite way as if that would somehow balance the plane.

But the hardest thing for me was when the plane headed out over the Atlantic Ocean. Rational thought told me that hitting the water it would be the same as hitting solid ground but my fears were telling me it was much more dangerous to fly over that big ocean. We flew overnight from New York to Amsterdam Holland. I would drift off to sleep for a while then I’d wake with a start & sit there thinking how unnatural it was for a big jet with hundreds of people aboard to be up in the air over the ocean. I’d repeat this pattern every hour on the hour. I had an awful time trying to keep that plane flying that night. The surprising part is - I knew the equation of speed and lift equaling flight. But the devil was attacking me with fear trying to make me believe that the success of the flight was all on my back, which of course is silly. The thing that finally enabled me to relax & come to a place of peace was telling myself that God could take care of me just as well flying over water as over mountains or flat land.

Then I acknowledged that the risk of flying was acceptable when I thought of where that big Jet was taking me. I was actually going to Europe. Then I was going to follow Paul’s footsteps in Italy & Greece, & finally I was going to walk in Jesus’ footsteps in The Holy Land. I was going to visit the Coliseum in Rome where the Christians were fed to the Lions. That to me was far better than refusing to risk flying the ocean & staying home under the bed.I also had to finally place my trust in the Plane & the pilots & trust that the jet engines would keep running until we found a place to land.

If you ever hear that I was on a plane that crashed, don't feel bad for me. Really!  Long ago I decided that I wasn't going to live a life ruled by fear.I often ask myself what my life would have been like had I refused to fly.Almost certainly I would never have visited the many beautiful lands and had the privilege to meet and minister to so many. I've just had to relax believing everything would work out & I’d not only be safe but enriched for the experience.

It’s the same for us as Christians. We believe Christ died & rose again & He is able to bring us safely into God’s rest & entering that rest is worth all the sacrifices we might make on the journey.

HUCKABEE

T.V personality and recent Republican presidential contender Mike Huckabee in a recent book tells his experience as he came up through the ranks in Arkansas politics, finally becoming one of the very few Republicans to be elected to the Governors office in that state.When he was first elected Lieutenant Governor, he found his office nailed shut from the inside. Most of the people who held office in the state were “yellow-dog Democrats,” meaning they’d vote for a yellow dog before they’d vote for a Republican.

Huckabee, being a committed Christian knew if he tried to play the game his detractors were playing he’d lose in the end so he stuck to his Christian principles. He told his staff to do just the opposite of what his enemies were doing. Though he had to occupy a small cubby-hole office for 59 days, [all the furniture had been removed from his office anyway] he just went about his work in a relaxed manner never seeking to retaliate in any way.Word got out about how he was being treated & a writer from The Wall Street Journal was sent down to see what was happening. In the end, Huckabee became one of the most popular & successful politicians in Arkansas & ended up serving two terms as Governor.

How did Huckabee accomplish this? Not by resorting to the street tactics of his enemies but by resting & believing that he’d be rewarded if he let God fight his battles.

DON'T YANK ON A KNOT

Here’s a simple little illustration. When you get a knot in a shoelace or any rope or string, the first thing you have to do is to not make the knot worse by yanking or pulling on it. If you do that the knot just becomes tighter. When a child comes to a parent with a knot in his shoelace, the first challenge is to get the child to be still while you are untangling the knot.One of the lessons God is trying to teach us is to cease from struggling & impatiently trying to work things out using our own strength & wisdom.

In Psalm 46:10 God instructs us….be still and know that I am God.

That means stop the panicky thoughts & efforts & just rest in God’s ability to untangle all our “knots.”If you & I can’t rest in God & trust Him with our lives as well as our eternal souls, we’ll never enter His rest. The writer of Hebrews puts it this way;

There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into His rest he also hath ceased from his own works as God did from His.

Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. Hebrews 4:9-11.


Every Blessing,


John