Too Tired to Find Rest.....

   Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it...... For we who have believed do enter that rest. ........ There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. (excerpted from Hebrews 4:1-10 NKJV) 

 

   Rest? What's that? 

 We Christians today often lead a haggard, anxiety filled existence while quietly reassuring ourselves that we can rely on Christ -- if we can just find time to get around to it.  We conceive that rest is an inactivity only to be engaged when no possible activity can replace it. Even church activity can overwhelm our capacity. Do we really think this is what Jesus meant when He said, Come to me all of you who are weak and heavy burdened and I will give you rest?

   John Owen, bible commentator, cited five attributes of resting in Christ:

1-  Rest means peace with God.

         

      We should find great rest when the Lord lifts our sin burden. Knowing the eternality of our peace with God should be a fountain of daily peace.

2-  Rest means freedom from a servile, bondage-like spirit in the worship and service of God.

       Paul often repeated that he was a bond servant to Christ, but meant an indenture induced by his love for his Savior rather than at the hand of a tyrant God.  

3-   Rest means deliverance from the burden of Mosaic observance.

      This should be a no-brainer for every Christian, but it is not. It is very easy to drift into a mindset of law abiding works, where our service becomes erroneously a pleasing payment that tries to earn the gift that Jesus has already given us.

4-  Rest means the freedom of worship according to the gospel.

      How often have we stood in worship on the brink of exuberance, only to tamp it down out of concern what some other Christian might think of us? Oh, if we would only worship with childlike abandon!

5-   Rest means the rest that God Himself enjoys.

    

      God never experiences anxiety or worry. Ever. As animators of Christ's attributes in and to a hurting world, we need only to receive His rest to animate it visibly in our lives. This takes first a restructuring of our priorities. There will be no peace without sufficient daily prayer and time spent in the Word. While seemingly obvious Christian solutions, these are often supplanted by human busyness. We need to relive ourselves of the mistaken view of Christianity as a state of constant doing, and replace it with a view of our constant awareness of our eternal peace with, in, and from the Lord. 

        We have submitted to His authority. Why do we find it so hard to submit to His rest?

Psalm 116  -- Return to your rest, O my soul,For the Lord has dealt bountifully with you.

Copyright 2014 Mission of the Master Ministries, Inc. May be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission if a link is provided to http://wordworkswednesday.blogspot.com 

Erasing Error Instead of Correcting It.....

And they sought to lay hands on Him, but feared the multitude, for they knew He had spoken the parable against them. So they left Him and went away. (Mark 12:12) 

    What do you do when you find the Word of God pressing against you?  This is an important question, because as the Holy Spirit leads us through the ongoing process of sanctification, many times the Word will instruct us and the Holy Spirit convict us. All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness... (1 Tim 3:16) If humility and submission to the authority of the Word reign in your heart, you'll submit, repent, and ask the Holy Spirit to guide a course correction in your life. But humility's nemesis, pride, often has a different plan, suggesting that we simply ignore or erase our error instead of correcting it.

   When Jesus walked the earth in flesh, the rulers of God's Temple in Jerusalem had allowed spiritual elitism to infect their minds. They liked being the ones who had all the answers, and when Jesus arrived with better answers, and the Word (in the flesh) pressed against them, they let pride driven envy infect their thoughts and block a corrective teaching about their leadership. Members of the Sanhedrin felt they had paid their dues through service to attain the positions they held in the Temple hierarchy. Still others, the priests of God, had inherited their jobs by right of birth as descendants of Aaron, and they felt prideful entitlement. Both groups had enjoyed a long season where their authority was never questioned, so instead of looking to the final Arbiter for answers, they had become their own arbiters. They had barked human inspired orders and the multitudes had obeyed them. Now, a Servant Lord had arrived with Truth on His tongue and it infuriated them. The Psalmist wrote --  When with rebukes You correct man for iniquity, You make his beauty melt away like a moth; Surely every man is vapor.... John Wesley expressed their situation like this -- How wonderful is the providence of God, using all things for the good of His children! Generally the multitude is restrained from tearing them in pieces only by the fear of their rulers. And here the rulers themselves are restrained, through fear of the multitude! 

    What do you do when you find the Word of God leaned against you? What do you do when you realize you are wrong, sideways with the Lord, caught in sin? We've all had the experience of abrupt conviction by the simple hearing of God's word. Those moments test our claims of submission. I'd be less than truthful if I didn't admit to you that I have myself applied the Pharisaic solution, and plotted against the word. I've experienced conviction and instead of submitting to it's instruction, searched the scriptures for a loophole that would excuse me.  I've even resorted to reconsidering contradictory doctrinal positions that I thought might excuse me where God had accused me. I've worn a scriptural hearing aid that would allow some thoughts in but protect me from the menacing truth of my sin. I've wasted a lot of time and effort and taken many winding paths only to find myself standing back at the foot of the Word, with my heart fully convicted. Prideful resistance of God was a forty seven year habit for me before He, by Grace through faith, saved me. That's when I first experienced the blessing of Divine correction. Still, well rooted old habits and favored sins like to try to push up new shoots every now and then. 

   The writer of Hebrews reminds us -- Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:11)  If we I want to yield the peaceable fruit of righteousness, we have to yield to the Vine-dresser's pruning Spirit.

   Where in your life is the word of God leaned against you? Where are you pushing back instead of submitting? Where are you listening to everything or anything on your spiritual iPod except what Holy Spirit and the Word of God are instructing?

    For whom the LORD loves He chastens...

Copyright 2014 Mission of the Master Ministries, Inc. May be reproduced in whole or in part without prior written permission if a link is provided to http://wordworkswednesday.blogspot.com 

Honey Boo Boo, iPhone5, Competing Ideas and the Thoughts of a Galilean Fisherman

    ...His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. (most of 2 Peter 1:2-4 NKJV)

    My high school English teacher would have told Peter that this verse was a run-on sentence, and I'll admit it includes a lot of words (108). It also includes multiple ideas. Several of them are very important. Every day I find competing new ideas vying for my attention. Some come attended by massive advertisement or intense buzz. Either of these can delude me into thinking they are important when they really aren't. The yeast of digital noise in all its many forms has often made the the unimportant swell into my view, inflated by nothing more than its own hot air. The words and ideas in this verse come to us by the inspiration of God and although we often have to slog trough a swampland of unimportant secular noise to get to them, its worth the effort. Some days I feel like I've received so much information that I've got ideas growing out of my head. How can I prioritize all of this information?

   (Oh yeah, His thoughts are higher than my thoughts...)

   His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him...  If I already have all things that pertain to life and godliness, what can an IPhone5 gain me?  Or a half an hour watching Honey Boo Boo? Siri is cool, but she can't give me anything that pertains to life. If these aren't included in the all things that pertain to life and godliness, I can be assured I don't need them (no matter how long the line is at the Apple Store). In the past I've been willing to try anything except knowing Him. I've been willing to follow every new trend instead of following Him, I've been willing to worship at every alter except His. In all that willingness I was pursuing an illusion. It all left me empty. I found not one single thing that pertained to life.

 

   ...having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. The Greek word translated here as lust is epithumia. It means desire, longing, wanting the forbidden. If the corruption is found in the world through desiring what is forbidden, what can set me free from those desires? How can I be lifted above my most base nature? Or in Paul's questioning words, -- O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Followed by his answer -- I thank God-- through Jesus Christ our Lord!  Romans 7:24,25 NKJV

   When corrupt ideas try to penetrate my  spiritual defenses how can I sort them out, mark them as useless and delete them from my memoric hard drive? God's mercy is fresh every morning. So also must be my submission to Him. My daily submission will lead to daily reconnection through prayer. My daily prayer will refresh my hunger for His Word. Consumption of His Word will stoke my spirit. Submitted, reconnected, refreshed, and stoked by His Word, I'll be a partaker of the (His) divine nature and I'll have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust for one more day. 

    And if I fail today and am captivated by useless noise into following the corruption that is in the world through lust, tomorrow the sun will rise and so will heaven's fresh mercy. So will forgiveness. So  will Holy Spirit, speaking in my heart, offering again exceedingly great and precious promises....

   Its a new day. Will you follow Siri? Honey Boo Boo? Whose ideas will captivate your attention today?