Blog In Audio:
Greetings,
Our obedience to God is connected to our belief in Him. This is not a believing that He is, but a believing in who He is. It is a believing that is inspired by love. When God rests in our lives we grow in knowing His love. When we know His love, we believe His words when He speaks. We even believe in Him, when He doesn’t speak. It is believing in Him that inspires our obedience to His desires. The children of Israel failed to connect their hearts to God and therefore their hearts were hardened towards Him. They wanted His supernatural works, but they put themselves at a distance from His manifest presence. For this reason, they could not hear His voice. They no doubt heard His voice speaking, but they did not embrace His presence in order to hear what He was saying.
Hebrews 4:6 Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, 7 again He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today,” after such a long time, as it has been said: “Today, if you will hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.”
We can only rest in God when we allow Him to rest in our own lives. When God rests in our lives, our lives are transformed by His presence. The rest that the children of Israel could not enter is still a rest for us to enter into today. It is a rest that empowers us to cease from our own labors that are merely our striving efforts to rest from our pain. God’s rest is a rest of satisfaction and expectation of God’s increasing life and goodness. Embracing God resting in our lives allows His manifest presence within us to give us our true identity, testimony, and purpose in life. These things can only manifest in our lives from knowing God’s satisfaction in our lives. God rests in us so we can labor from rest, not in order to be able to rest. When we live our lives from the place of God resting in our lives, God gives us the desires of our hearts. He literally puts desires in our hearts that are His desires and then we can obey Him with passion and not some service of control and obligation.
Hebrews 4:8 For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. 9 There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 10 For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.
A face to face experience with the expressions of God inspire a fresh activation of the voice of God in our hearts. Only a fresh activation of God’s voice within us can empower us to know His word, will, and way for today.
Hebrews 4:11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
We don’t need to be afraid of the hidden things being exposed. We should be encouraged that anything that is not of life within us can be transformed to become life by His life-giving presence in our lives. Being judged by God’s law can be a fearful thing but becoming the parchment upon which, He can write is liberating and should plant within our hearts and minds an expectance of good things each and every day. The time to know God’s resting in us and for us to rest in Him is TODAY, and ALWAYS TODAY.
As leaders, we must lead from rest in order to inspire those we lead to do the same. This can only happen when we know God’s manifest presence resting in our lives.
Food For Thought,
Ted J. Hanson
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