There is no doubt that at the moment everyone is setting new year resolutions and making statements and starting programs on the basis of what they feel this year holds in the realm of the Spirit. I am sure all of these are good and I would normally be right up there with them. However I sense not to do that this year and stop trying to work out for myself what God is going to do. Instead I feel we should be at rest from working out what we will do and listen and be a part of what God does.

To do that we must enter into His rest like never before. Now I am not saying that this is an excuse to put our feet up all year and do nothing but sit in front of the TV and vegetate. However it may mean we have to stop frantically trying to work out our programs and our way of doing things assuming that only our way will  be right. Instead we must take time aside and allow God to come in and be Himself in our lives. After all the Holy spirit is here to be to us all that he promised to be but so often we don’t let Him do that.

Hebrews 3 and 4 provides us with some excellent insight into this subject and we would all benefit from reading and re reading those verses.

To begin with in Hebrews 3:7-11 we have a warning not to harden our hearts. Here the writer is reflecting on a critical period in the history of the Jewish Nation culminating in a promise by the Lord that those people would not enter His rest. As we know the Lord had just delivered them out of Egypt and was taking them to the promised land. However,  most of the people did not like the way he was going about it. If you read the account in Exodus you are struck by the number of times they muttered and complained and tried to take things into their own hands instead of trusting God that  he knew what he was doing.  All that was despite witnessing  some of the most powerful miracles ever found in the scriptures. It meant that they ended up wandering round in the wilderness for 40 years when they could have done the journey in 11 days.

It is a good lesson for us and demonstrates how we also can have a tendency to get on our own soap box and our own particular way of working everything out, then only going to God for approval at the end when we have decided what we are going to do. Alternatively we end up turning to Him in tears of anguish when it hasn’t worked out.

Now given the complex nature of us humans you may feel that this taking any other course of action is an impossible dream. But that is not so and indeed verse 19 of chapter 3 warns us that so often the reason we do not attain to rest is unbelief. We just can’t trust God despite all we know about Him. Perhaps that is the problem, we know about Him but don’t take the time to become intimately acquainted with Him.

Nevertheless Hebrews 4:1 gives us hope

“Therefore since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it.”

Now that can be received as a warning or an express understanding from the word that we do indeed have that rest because it says“lest any seem to have come short of it”. It does not say we have definitely done so.

So how have we or how do we enter that rest?

The first key is in verse 3 of chapter 4

“For we who have believed do enter that rest”

When we come to Christ there is an acknowledgement that we have messed up on our life doing it the way we did and a recognition that what Christ did on the cross was sufficient to change that for us. Jesus’ death caused that symbolic  veil of separation in the temple to tear in two so that we have the perfect access into the Fathers rest.

We must also consider the second key as outlined by verse 10

“For he who has entered HIs rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His”

I believe this is more of a challenge for us and maybe reflects a staged approach to the rest of God. Yes there is a general rest when we come to Christ but it is all too easy just to accept salvation and then go on living the way we have always done. This verse would say that there is more.

What is more verse 11 confirms for us that we should be diligent to enter that rest. To do so requires us to cease from our own works and rest in His. In other words we quit doing just what we want and start doing what God wants because we recognise His ways are better than our ways.That requires  trust. Trust that what the Lord tells us to change or become like is for our benefit and would do us more good than carrying on the way we always have.

Romans 12 calls it renewing the mind. When we come to Christ there are still all manner of character traits and thought patterns going on from our past life that do not line up with God’s way of doing things. The more we yield our heart and mind to those ways the deeper into that rest we will come.

It is truly the rest of faith.  However faith is only able to rest if it does so in God. We have to allow God to do all the work in us.
It is God’s divine rest that we enter by faith.

So lets come full circle and consider how that applies to us at the start of this year.

I am certain that throughout this year the Lord will speak to us, encourage us, challenge us and stretch us. For some this will be a blessing. For others it will entail changing attitude and being prepared to step out into areas we have not dared go before.

It is easy at the start of a year to kind of second guess God with our resolutions and personal choices over what we should be doing.I sense that God is going to ask more of us than ever before, that He wants to perform some mighty miracles both in us and through us. However He wants us to be available when He wants us, in His timing. So we are going to have to be diligent to push into His rest. To seek Him out as a priority in our lives this year and be in the secret place where He can speak to us and where we will be sensitive enough to hear.

Then when we do get our orders we have to trust enough and be strong enough to believe and obey so we see the glory of the Lord working mighty things throughout our land.

Do yourself a favour at the start of this year then. Take some time aside to rest and wait on Him. Make it quality time with a purpose of hearing His heart for you this year. Then when the time comes whatever He tells you to do will be accompanied with greater power and longer lasting results that will encourage and excite you for the future.

Have a great year.