Do Your Best to Rest

There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest.

Hebrews 4:9–11 (NIV)

Most of us think of the Sabbath as a day of rest, originating from the day of rest God took after he created the universe, as recorded in Genesis. That view is correct; it’s the reason we should take a Sabbath, a day of rest, each week.

Yet the Sabbath has a larger sense: an invitation to rest in God’s healing grace, trusting in his power and his purpose for your life. We rest in our Father’s arms, knowing he goes before and behind, knowing that his plans for us are good and not evil (Jeremiah 29:11).

God wants us to focus our efforts toward entering this Sabbath-trust in God, a restful, radiant certainty that God’s got a handle on it all, and that he’s got our best interests in mind.

Ian Thomas illustrates this point by telling the story of a man walking down a dusty, rural road on a hot and humid day. The man is loaded down with a heavy backpack and carries a duffle bag in each hand. A pick-up truck comes along, and the driver lets the man hop in the back.

The driver heads on down the road, but when he looks in the rearview mirror he sees that his passenger is standing in the bed of the truck still holding both duffle bags, still wearing the over-packed backpack on his back.

Truth is: We stand in the truck of faith, still carrying our burdens, thinking they’re independent of our ride with God. We think God can carry us, but not our burdens. But God’s truck of faith is big enough to carry us and to carry all our burdens.

Sit down and rest in the ride of God, our Father, carrying us home to him....Jon Walker