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, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience. Hebrews 4:9-11
The Dead Sea in Israel is five times saltier than ocean water; consequently, it’s almost impossible for someone to drown in it. A certain visitor to the area, not knowing this, fell off a pier into the water and wildly began to flail his arms and legs because he couldn’t swim.
The minerals in the water stung his eyes and only multiplied his distress. After several minutes of churning the water, the man just gave up, thinking he would surely drown when his body quietly began to rest in the water. At that point, a local area resident calmly reached down with an extended arm and pulled him to safety.
“Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity,” said someone. That’s true. But getting to the point of exhausting your resources and your attempts to help yourself, allowing God to lift you out of your difficulty is usually not without a great deal of struggle.
When God led the children of Israel into the Promised Land, so wrote the writer of the book of Hebrews, God gave them rest. Here’s how he put it: “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, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience” (Hebrews 4:9-11).
Friend, there comes a point in your life when you realize you are not in control, that the difficulties that confront you are more than you can handle. Then you realize God is the only one who can take care of this. Only then are you a candidate for God’s grace and help.
Four steps are necessary for this to happen. You can take the English word rest, r-e-s-t, and form an acrostic.
The R stands for relax. That’s when you cease from your own striving and turn things over to the Lord. Like the man thrashing and flailing his arms, you are trying to do what only God can do. So, the first step is stop, and commit things to him. Talking about their financial situation, a wife told her husband, “There is nothing we can do now but pray.” Alarmed, the husband replied, “Has it really come to that?”
The E in the word stands for enter into His peace. This is an act of your will whereby you commit yourself to what God tells you about yourself, about the circumstances facing you, about your future. It’s the attitude of the psalmist who said, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me.”
The S in that word stands for step out in faith. Why worry, if you really believe God’s in control? This, of course, means that you settle the issue of whether or not you believe God is big enough, powerful enough, and cares enough to do what He’s promised to do in His word. What you do after that is either a step of faith, or you turn around and head back towards the Egypt of the world. When God’s people crossed the Jordan, there was no going back. Safety is not the absence of danger, but the presence of the Lord.
The T in the word stands for trust. Faith has two components: belief, which is intellectual; and trust, which is personal, experiential, and appropriational. It’s what describes a cool response to a hot situation. It’s turning off the lights at night as you say, “Lord, you take over the night shift. No sense in both of us being awake.”
Resource reading: Isaiah 30:15-18
