~Taken from my book Visions of Celestial Love
For we who have believed (adhered to and trusted in and relied on God) do enter that rest in accordance with His declaration that those [who did not believe] should not enter when He said, As I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest; and this He said although [His] works had been completed and prepared [and waiting for all who would believe] from the foundation of the world. —Hebrews 4:3 AMPC
Pause, and think calmly about those words.
Something about this scripture jumped out at me, and I have not myself to thank, nor my own intelligence, but the Holy Spirit. He’s the Life in the Word. The One who makes it living and active. Without Him, reading God’s Word is like reading another book—and there is hardly anything sadder than that. Do you see the word “works” in here?
Whose work, is it? It’s God’s.
Our only job, the one that we’ve always had, even in the old covenant, is to believe.
The same is true today, underneath the righteousness, blood, grace, and work of Christ.
Believing secures our rest. The rest God ordained for us to have before the foundations of the world. The rest of relationship.
Let’s continue reading about rest in Hebrews:
Again He sets a definite day, [a new] Today, [and gives another opportunity of securing that rest] saying through David after so long a time in the words already quoted, Today if you would hear His voice and when you hear it, do not harden your hearts. [This mention of a rest was not a reference to their entering into Canaan.] For if Joshua had given them rest, He [God] would not speak afterward about another day.
—Hebrews 4:7–8 AMPC
Think again for a moment. Before you read on, ask the Holy Spirit to help you grasp what this means.
I believe that entering God’s rest was more important than receiving the promised land. I believe it was more important than the Israelites entering into Canaan or even crossing over the Jordan to obtain the promise of land.
God was more interested in His people having relationship with Him. God’s always been more about the internal soul and the spiritual than He is about physical possessions.
Once again, ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you the meaning of these scriptures; He might give you more information, more insight than He’s given me here.
Perhaps the purpose of them entering the land was for them to enter into rest. The only way to that was belief. Trusting faith. A heart that knows God, knows He’s good, and knows His nature. A heart that knows His thoughts toward us, and more specifically you.
He’s a giver. Always has been, always will be. His nature does not change. He’s the same yesterday, today, and forevermore.
So then, there is still awaiting a full and complete Sabbath-rest reserved for the [true] people of God; For he who has once entered [God’s] rest also has eased from [the weariness and pain] of human labors, just as God rested from those labors peculiarly His own.
—Hebrews 4:9–10 AMPC
There is such beautiful promise in here.
Aren’t you tired of working? Of striving?
There is a sanctified striving that should exist in every believer of Jesus Christ, but it is often perverted.
We’re not striving to be accepted by God, or acceptable to Him. Our works, our striving will never get us that. Our striving should be out of rest, in a place of absolute peace. Done from joy, and with joy. Done out of love, in love, and through love. This cannot be done without belief. Our works shouldn’t even really feel like work.
Wanting to know our Jesus, wanting to be like Him, should be a part of our nature, as getting food or water to drink is when we’re hungry or thirsty. It should be a daily activity. It should be a mental domain, an internal setting.
When I asked if you were tired of working, I was talking about the working you see being done every day.
I mean look around you. Look at your loved ones. Look at the strangers on the street. The college students. The moms, the dads of our society just trying to pay the bills, fix ourselves and squeeze whatever joy we can out of life as if we’ve got a dried lemon in our hands that we keep trying to wring out.
I bet you hear the words “busy,” or/and, “tired,” come out their mouths when you ask them how they’re doing.
If they don’t say it, you can see it, or at least detect it. Can you detect it in yourself? It doesn’t belong there if you can.
Once again, our only work is to believe. Believe God can change us, believe God loves us as we are, and believe we don’t even have to perfect our faith. That is Jesus’s job. He is after all called “the pioneer and perfecter of faith” (Hebrews 12:2 NIV, italics added).
The Amplified Bible even goes as far as to describe Jesus’s perfecting of us—calling Him our faith’s finisher. The word says He brings it to “maturity and perfection” (Hebrews 6:1 AMP, italics added).
There is no room for guilt, shame, or condemnation in rest. Let me tell you something about guilt, shame, and condemnation (I’ve just struggled with it this morning, and the Holy Spirit lifted it off of me), it only comes out of an attitude, a heart, of works. It only comes when our own efforts fail, or are frustrated. It all comes out of our works.
God called us to work, not to works.
There is a natural work in the human life. There’s cooking, cleaning, etc., that needs to be done. If you’re on the prayer team at church, or have a God-ordained “job,” then yes, physically you are working. But there should never be a lack of peace inside. When there is, you have started works within.
God’s “jobs” for us are always a delight, and always for our good, and the good of the body. And God is always about balance, not burning yourself out, and not being sluggish or slothful either. Furthermore, I want to point out that “feeling” guilt or shame or condemnation is evil. I’m not calling you evil. I imagine that you’re in Jesus Christ, especially if you’re reading this, thus you are imputed with His righteousness.
I’m calling the act of holding onto (not letting go of) guilt, shame, and condemnation evil. The act is evil—a sin. And the Word of God declares it so. It is either done in an act of unbelief, or pride disguised as holiness. Listen to this,
Let us all come forward and draw near with true (honest and sincere) hearts in unqualified assurance and absolute conviction engendered by faith (by that leaning of the entire human personality on God in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness), having our hearts sprinkled and purified from a guilty (evil) conscience and our bodies cleansed with pure water.
— Hebrews 10:22 AMPC
Do you know why guilt is evil? Because it doubts the power of the blood of Jesus to free us from sin. It doubts the overwhelming strength of the mercies and grace of God. It disbelieves His very love.
This is so powerful. This is a reverential truth that will set you free if you believe. The Holy Spirit convicts us, He never condemns us. And God doesn’t condemn man. God condemns man’s sin.
Those who choose to attach themselves to sin, instead of God, through Christ Jesus, have chosen to attach themselves to the thing that God condemns.
God’s heart is good. Jesus has paid the price of sin, and the weight and power of it.
I like what Joyce Meyer says. She says that she believes the power and the weight of sin is guilt, shame, and condemnation.
Hear the words of the Lord through His faithful apostle,
Whereas this One [Christ], after He had offered a single sacrifice for our sins [that shall avail] for all time, sat down at the right hand of God. For by a single offering He has forever completely cleansed and perfected those who are consecrated and made holy.
— Hebrews 10:12 AMPC
Jesus has done it.
I also want to point out to you the word “made.” The Holy Spirit just pointed this out to me (how I love His company and Presence). We can try to make ourselves holy, or we can be made holy.
We are made holy by grace through faith. We are saved by grace through faith. The key word here is grace. Not even faith is the key word. I’ll tell you why: Faith is graced to us.
Isn’t it God who appoints to us the measure of faith (Romans 12:3)? And remember that everything God gives us is a gift (James 1:17 AMPC). Gifts come free.
Isn’t it God who called us through His Holy Spirit to come to Him to receive His grace that we may be saved (see John 6:44)?
If we truly know that we are forgiven completely, accepted fully, and made perfect by Jesus, then we will have peace. And we’ll have something to get excited and stirred up for.
Entering God’s rest is not without the exertion, or perhaps better stated, the exercising of belief. The growing of belief only comes by grace.
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 4:11 AMPC
Once again, the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to something here. If we are trying to do God’s job in us or outside of us by working, our faith will wither away and, as this verse implies, it will “perish by…unbelief.”
Ultimately, working to “help God out” is an act of unbelief and it shows a lack of confidence in Him. The more we practice working, the more we feed unbelief. The more we stray from God. The more hopeless we become that He will ever come through for us.
God works through faith. Indeed, if we are working, thus acting out of unbelief and disobedience to His command to believe, then the power and glory of God that we so desperately want to see in our lives will never manifest. Or it is highly unlikely that it will manifest.
I say that because Saul didn’t believe on Christ Jesus, but Jesus still met him on His way to Damascus. After that encounter, I say, He fully believed on Jesus, or strived after it ardently.
Many Christians who strive, seem to strive not to believe. Or at least they feed their unbelief by rehearsing their doubts, either verbally to others or mentally to themselves. Instead of striving to not believe, strive and fight to believe. Fight the good fight of faith (1 Timothy 6:12 NASB). Lastly, I want to quote a wonderful passage from a book that I’ve found very helpful on my faith journey. In The Book of Healing, John Reynolds writes:
They came to Jesus and said, “What must we do that we might work the works of God?” Jesus said to them, “This is the work of God that you might believe on Him Who He has sent.” They didn’t ask Him what to do to get saved, they asked about doing the works of God. Jesus said, “Believe on Me.”
Jesus has done all that is necessary for us to receive from God. “Father, I have finished the works you gavest me to do.” How many of us are trying to “work the works of God?” Jesus overcame every temptation. “He was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin, let us therefore come boldly before the throne of grace that we [may] receive mercy and find grace to help.” The throne of what? The throne of GRACE. Stop trying to “work the works.” Stop trying to “work” for your healing, your present. Stop confessing the Scriptures with the attitude of trying to “make” something happen. “For it is the Fathers GOOD pleasure” to give it to you! The price has been paid by Jesus. Go and freely receive from Him based upon His grace.
Yes, it is important to know and quote the scriptures but don’t do it from the “I’m going to make this happen” attitude but rather from a heart attitude of “Father, I thank you for what Jesus did for me at Calvary when he bore my sickness and carried my pain. Father, I ask you to heal my body based on your grace and I thank you for it now in Jesus’s name.” Then just give thanks that your prayers have been heard and answered and act your faith.[
Our fight in life is simply this:
to believe on the One God has sent. And belief, faith itself, grows best in
rest.
[i] John Reynolds, The Book of Healing: How to Receive Healing from the Lord Jesus Christ (John Reynold Ministries, 2012), 44. Scripture references from John 6:28–29; Luke 12:32, version unknown. PDF available at http://www.thehealingministry.com/.