Good morning glorious ones!

Do you agree with me that one of the primary characteristics of the world system is toil?  It’s a system that’s based on self-reliance and trusting in our own abilities to achieve success.  The problem with relying on ourselves is that it leaves God out of the equation.  It’s like taking over the driver’s seat of our lives rather than RESTING IN HIS PROMISES and letting Him do the driving.  It’s through our trust in His redemptive work that we are able to have success in everything the Bible says we can have.  We must simply REST.

The picture of the Sabbath day was a picture of REST and it’s a picture that we are to take into the way we live our lives as Christians.  God created the world and everything in it over a period of six days.  On the seventh day, He ended His work and RESTED.  The Jews set aside the Sabbath day as a day to cease from any kind of work as a symbolic representation of what God did when He had finished creation.

Today, we are under a new covenant through Jesus Christ, which means that we are no longer under the law and mandated to observe the Sabbath on a particular day.  The core issue is the message found within the Sabbath principle – to REST in the finished work of Jesus instead of relying in our own works as a way to access the promises of God.

The finished work of Jesus has made some wonderful things available to every Christian:  Healing, deliverance, prosperity, wisdom, peace, provision, and much more are all part of our salvation package.  We know that these things are the will of God because they are found in His Word.  Once we find something in the Word, we are to receive that particular promise by faith and then move into this REST.  However, if we don’t release our faith, we can’t enter into that REST.

We read in Hebrews 3:18-19,

• And to whom was God speaking when he took an oath that they would never enter His REST?  Wasn’t it the people who disobeyed Him?  

So, we see that because of their unbelief, they were not able to enter His REST.

The Israelites spent forty years in the wilderness because of their unbelief, rather than entering into the Promised Land.  Unbelief is as much a hinderance to us entering into THE REST OF GOD as it was to the Jews back in the Old Testament.

The truth is that very few Christians are truly RESTING in what Jesus has already done.  Religion teaches people that they have to try to get God to do something, and if they fall short of perfection, they won’t receive anything from God; however, understanding that you have been made righteous through  your faith in Jesus Christ enables you to receive from Him simply because you are in relationship with Him.  You don’t have to try to make something happen through your own abilities; you know that it’s through faith that you receive from the Lord.

Hebrews 4:10 says,

• For all who have entered into GOD’S REST have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world.

We enter into THE REST OF GOD when we stop trying to get God to do something He has already done.  Verse 11 instructs us to labor to enter into HIS REST and not fall into unbelief.  This is the only LABOR that a Christian should be doing when it comes to activating the promises of God.

If you are in Christ, you have an abundance of spiritual resources on the inside of you.  You are a new creation in Christ Jesus, and deliverance, prosperity, abundance, and healing are residing in your recreated spirit.  Instead of trying to get God to move, release your faith to withdraw what He has already deposited in you, and believe that you receive it.  When you know with every fiber of your being that what God said belongs to you is yours, you can REST confidently knowing that you will see the manifestation of those things.

RESTING IN HIS PROMISES,

Lisa Gordon

Assistant Pastor

Jesus City Church