Rest in God

Rest in God

“For we who have believed do enter that rest . . . .” Heb. 4:3.

Only by going the way of faith can we come to rest. In this faith we can cast ourselves into His arms, fully and completely and without reservation. We cast all fear, all doubts, all anxiety, and all cares on Him, because He cares for us. By doing this we enter into a blessed rest. We enter into a state in which we can say, together with David, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” In this state He leads us to green pastures and still waters. There we can receive nourishment and our soul can be restored and strengthened. In this stillness God can continue His work with us by instructing us in His ways. He teaches us how we should conduct ourselves in all of life’s circumstances. Filled with rest and spiritual power, we are now led onward by God in paths of righteousness. During this sojourn He becomes our shepherd, and we become His sheep. We become totally dependent on Him. He protects us, and He guides and leads our steps throughout our life. We increasingly abandon ourselves to Him as we learn to know Him as someone who cares for us. Then we will also experience that our rest increases to the same extent. We enter more deeply into rest as the death of Christ works in us. A dead man rests from all his works. This will also be our experience. We do not need to fear the outcome of any of our works, because we have abandoned ourselves into His hand, and we know that we will reap when the time has come.

Only someone who lives a life of constant victory is in perfect rest. We cannot rest in areas in which we are still battling. We can rest only from that which we were subject to after we have gained the victory over it, after we have put it to death and destroyed it. Consequently, we can gradually enter into rest from anger, jealousy, envy, the lust to rule over others, and all the things that can disturb our contact with God in our spirit. This is indeed a blessed rest. However, we can only obtain it in one way: by going the way Christ went—the same way Paul and all the saints down through the years have gone—which is the way of self-denial, the way of the cross.