How to enter the Rest of God
Jesus cried out on the cross “it is finished” and as He bowed His head He submitted His Spirit into the hands of the Father. The ‘rest of God’ is the finished work of Christ.
We enter that rest through the cross and can now submit our spirits into His hands. His rest is submitting every area of our life into His hands, that is every anxiety, every future expectation and present anticipation - into your hands I submit my spirit. That is the recognition that He is in control, that He is faithful, and that we can fall back into His arms - into a new and living way.
Jesus has created a way, for He is the way, He is the new and living way and we can enter the Door Himself into the rest of God. There is no other way to enter the rest of God but through the new and living way - Jesus. The rest of God is not the things that He gives us but the truth of what He is. The rest of God isn’t life improvements but the Son Himself becoming our life.
Hindrances from entering the Rest
We are hindered from entering into His rest by sin, disobedience and unbelief. Unbelief is the opposite of faith and it is this unbelief that stops God doing what He wants to do in our lives. Unbelief itself is a form of rejection, if we want a relationship with Him we must take Him at His word and just trust Him. We need to confess our unbelief and ask Him to be the author of our faith. We can only enter into the promised land by the faith that He gives because of His love - He wants us to “pour out our heart to Him” (psalm 61:8), He wants a relationship with us. The rest of God is a relationship with Him.
The rest is Complete
We cannot add anything to the rest of God. Jesus Christ is “full of grace and truth” and because He is full we cannot add anything to Him or the rest that He is. If by our own ability we could add anything to the grace of God, Jesus would not be full of grace and truth. The fact that He is full of grace and truth is the reason that nothing can be added to Him. The rest of God can only be accepted, and when truly excepted it has been truly entered. We accept it just by faith of what He has done and not what we have done. Our devotions, prayers and reading of the word do not itself give us the rest of God - the rest is only a relationship with Him.
Positional Truth is a fact
We have been translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love (Colossians 1:13), if only we could open our eyes to see and realize the position we have been placed in. It makes me think of an island, if someone was placed on an island but with eyes closed continually tried to get to that island, their trying would be in vain because they are already on that island.
We are already in the new covenant of grace, often times we can close our eyes and try to get to Him through works but the fact is we have been placed there already - translated into the kingdom of light. Anything else from our own self is stepping back into the old covenant or in other words stepping back into nothingness. Instead of trying to be blessed even with prayer and personal devotion we get to be blessed, we get to live in the kingdom of the Son of His love because we have been placed there - “grace is poured upon your lips.” (psalm 45:3)
The result of existing in this new and living way is a close relationship with God, the new and living way means we have been hidden in the beloved, the new and living way means we can come boldly to the throne of grace, the new and living way is a living hope, the new and living way is a walk stretching into eternity, the new and living way is now our life! Therefore my prayer time and devotion with God is not a ‘got too’ but a ‘get too,’ it is just a natural result of being translated into the kingdom of the Son of His love - the new and living way.
Jesus is the rest of God
Jesus is our Sabbath, we no longer have to obey laws but just abide in Christ, grow in Him - we don‘t grow out from our own works but we grow out from His grace. He does not tell us what not to do but tells us what we should do - that is why it is a living way because He writes His will on our hearts. We no longer have to obey laws but instead respond to the Son of Love as we abide in Him - “for he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did form His.” (Hebrews 4:10)
To add just one thing to Jesus is to remove the grace of God - God doesn’t require we do anything - Jesus is the culmination of all spiritual things. In the new and living way we get to draw close to Him, we find the reason for life, we get to abide in Him which is to experience life itself. Now we are connected to life itself, the fountain of life, having “the life” abiding in us. (john 14:6, 2 Corinthians 13:5) He asks all of us to enter into the joy of His Lord, we stand on His promises, His finished work, He is the living hope, He is the way, He is the truth, He is the life - to submit to Him is to let Him author our faith, it seems scandalous to say but what we are submitting to is His love, we get to submit to His love and it is that love which brings us into the Holiest of All - the ‘rest of God‘.
