Rest in God

When Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah and Jerusalem were faced with what to them seemed an impossible situation, a portion of what God said to them was,

“You won’t have to lift a hand in this battle; just stand firm…and watch God’s saving work for you take shape. Don’t be afraid, don’t waver. March out boldly tomorrow—God is with you.” – 2 Chronicles 20:17 (MSG)

This message is still relevant for us today but is deeper in its meaning and significance now than it was then, because of what Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection effected in the earth and for every individual. Most people, even Christians, don’t truly grasp the wonderment of Jesus’ miraculous, supernatural life, death and resurrection. Our vision is limited to our too shallow thoughts, but we must be willing to see beyond the obvious, delve into the deep and look far afield if we are to progress spiritually.

Jehoshaphat and his people were to “stand firm” in their confidence in God’s character and word but with Jesus we can do more than that, we have the ability to rest in God through the power of His own Spirit who lives inside our regenerated hearts. So ours is not just an attitude of quiet confidence in God but such a complete and utter dependence on Him that we can sleep soundly, undisturbed and unperturbed in every situation. 

“A huge storm came up. Waves poured into the boat, threatening to sink it. And Jesus was in the stern, head on a pillow, sleeping!” – Mark 4:37-38 (MSG)

Rest in God gives us the ability, like Jesus, to sleep during the storms of life and stay afloat in the worst floods that may threaten to take us under but we are seated with Jesus in the Throne Room of heaven above the futility of this world, above the din and the noise, above the struggles and the challenges, above the ceaseless religious works and striving of the flesh – this is rest in God.

Rest in God is to be totally dependent on His saving work, the Divine work that only God can accomplish; it’s where the impossible is possible. Rest in God is to experience “Thy Kingdom come here on earth as it is in heaven” – a taste of eternity. Rest in God is where the unsearchable things of God become searchable; it is to live in God’s reality and revelation. Rest in God sets us free from wrestling with issues and offers us in exchange for our weariness and heavy loads, easy yokes and light burdens. 

Rest in God is not a physical rest done through our efforts, but a spiritual rest apprehended only by faith through the power of the Holy Spirit; it’s where God is the centre and fills everything. Rest in God is a place of no fear, and no limitations; it brings us out on the other side of destruction, unscathed.

Rest in God is an active rest but it’s not our activity, for God does not require our help in solving our problems, because, as His children, our problems are His problems and He is pleased to save us. 

The work at Calvary has already secured a wonderful rest for us and has redeemed us from the endless fighting to obtain and maintain. Rest in God is a higher form of rest whose concept seems ridiculous to the world’s thinking because it goes against everything that we’ve been brought up to believe. “Rest in God” creates discomfort and discombobulation for the religious mind because such a mind cannot relate to such things; it’s incomprehensible to the one who believes that he must labour to dig a well then labour to draw from it rather than receive the water freely from a natural spring. 

Rest in God is a cessation of all our work in amassing material things, it is to leave the wilderness and enter the Promised Land, it is having a heart for God to believe, trust and obey Him and to cling to His truth which states,

“…he who has once entered [God’s] rest also has ceased from [the weariness and pain] of human labors, just as God rested from those labors peculiarly His own. Let us therefore be zealous and exert ourselves and strive diligently to enter that rest [of God, to know and experience it for ourselves], that no one may fall or perish by the same kind of unbelief and disobedience [into which those in the wilderness fell].” – Hebrews 4:10-11 (AMPC).

Amen†

Rest in God

Shelley Johnson July 28, 2017