PICKING up where we left off in Chapter 15 looking at REST in Principles of Spiritual Growth, we are coming to realize what it means to cease from our own efforts and enter into a rest – what I like to term a quiet confidence – in the providence and perfect provisions of our God. But we are seeing it is a process of constant learning in acquiring that realization.
THE scriptures repeat in several places that the “trials of our faith are more precious than gold, in which we should rejoice” (1Pet. 1:6-7), and yet our natural tendency is to try to avoid the unpleasant trials of life. Yet, we know in our heart that avoiding the difficult and unpleasant is not the way to true accomplishment and ultimate victory. As F. Washington Jarvis writes in With Love and Prayers – “Most [people] already know that the only life worth living is the hard life,” …that, “We grow more through our sufferings than through our successes.” I know for myself and of others who can heartily attest that their greatest spiritual growth occurred through the most difficult and heart breaking of times. And that’s the key word or phrase, “heart breaking.” It is when our hearts are most broken that they are most open to instruction and depths of true experiential learning.
“The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart, and saves such as have a contrite spirit.” – Psa. 34:18 (51:11)
MANY who watch sporting events, especially the Olympics, can only imagine the amount of training, preparation, discipline, and sacrifice the athletes go through just to qualify to compete in the final event. Paul uses this analogy for the Christian life in 1Cor 9. I’ve heard it said in describing a football game that it is an event where 22 exhausted men desperately in need of rest compete in a stadium being watched by 22,000 people desperately in need of exercise. And yet for all the cheering, celebration, and “glad-handing” at the end the game, who has the greater reward and story to tell upon leaving the arena – those in the stands, or those who were in the game suffering the battering, bruises, and exhaustion from being in the game – the struggle play out on the field?
WE often speak of the joy of the Lord being our strength (Neh. 8:10). On that, one further quote from F. Washington Jarvis, “Whatever else the harder way is, it is not dull. It is, I would submit, much more exciting, much more rewarding, and dare we say it, much more fun.” (With Love and Prayers) Fun? Well, …think about it, and let’s now see what our author has for us today as we continue in our consideration of what it takes to enter into our Lord’s Rest.
With regards in Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa 30:15, Jas 1:2
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Chapter 15—Rest Continued….
Thank God for the needs that just will not allow the hungry heart to stop short of finding them met in Him. It is necessary to remember a fundamental principle in the spiritual life: that God only reveals spiritual truths to meet spiritual needs. How many rest on the initial stage of the new birth: “Born again … of incorruptible [seed] by the word of God” (I Pet. 1:23) and fail to press on to know “Begotten … by the resurrection of Jesus Christ … to an inheritance” (vv. 3, 4).
Through the years the hungry-hearted believer finds that he has been brought a long way, and each step of the way has been personally experienced. This is reality which springs from faith founded on the facts of the Word. “The more clearly we enter by faith into objective truth, or what is true of us in Christ, the deeper, more experiential, and practical, will be the subjective work in us, and the more complete will be the manifestation of the moral effect in our life and character” (C.H.M.).
Yes, brought a long way, walking a step at a time, by faith: The rest of faith concerning our justification; the rest of faith concerning our acceptance; the rest of faith concerning our position in Christ Jesus; the rest of faith concerning our identification with Christ in death, resurrection and ascension. Each step established in the rest of faith brings us to the next one. Each must be settled before the next can be rested on. …to be continued
