Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Matt. 11:28
WE return now to our study in The Complete Green Letters, Part One – Principles of Spiritual Growth, coming to chapter 15 simply titled Rest. As the title of our study implies, our author has been describing those things necessary to understand and apply if we are to grow in Christ. He has taken us step by step through the principle of Faith, Time, Acceptance, Purpose, Preparation, what it means to be Complete in Him, along with Appropriation, Identification, Consecration, Self and Self-denial; and finally, Discipleship and the Process of Discipleship. That is a lot of information, and all of it is based on what preceded this study in what we reviewed previously in our look of The Principle of Position, The Foundations of Spiritual Growth, which is where this blog began back in 2013.
SO now our author brings us to the topic of Rest, another important aspect that in vital in the spectrum of Principles of Spiritual Growth, one that runs very counter to our human nature, one not easily learned or applied consistently. This is one concept that on the surface represents somewhat of an oxymoron in the Christian Life: “Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest,” says Hebrews 4:11. Think about it, we need to “work at resting?” And yet, that’s exactly right.
I Recall early on in my Christian life being taught rather repetitively by a faithful Bible teacher a concept he termed “The Faith-Rest Life.” I believe I still have the notebooks of the study somewhere stuffed away. But I know how thankful I am for that early instruction, also knowing right well that it is easier understood than applied. With that thought goes my prayers that as we look at this chapter we will not be like that man in James, “doers of the word, and not hearers only:”
….[He was] a man observing his natural face in a mirror; … observing himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was. … but a doer of the word, this one will be blessed in what he does. (James 1:22-25)
SO, with that introduction we come now to Chapter 15, and the principle of Rest.
With regards in Christ,
Joe
Neh. 8:10, Isa 30:15, Jas 1:2
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Chapter 15—Rest
“There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest” (Heb. 4:9–11). So many of the life-giving truths in the Word consist of two intertwining halves that are inseparable. “Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest.” As for labor, it is true that there is a great deal of struggling and searching and pleading and agonizing in the process of discovering and understanding truths fitted to our needs. And much of the same pathway is trod (or crawled) in an effort to appropriate and enter in. All this is not in vain; it is necessary. But it is not the key that opens the door to reality. Rest is the key to entering into rest!
In the important but exhausting labor process we come to see the needed truth; we become sure of our facts; we begin to realize something of what is ours in the Lord Jesus Christ. The appropriation of, the resting in, the reality must be on the basis of faith, not struggle and labor. We are told to reckon, to count on, what we now know to be true of us in Him as set forth in the Word. “In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength” (Isa. 30:15). We are told to quietly and steadily look to our Father in confident trust and thankfully receive that which He has given to us in His Son. “These wait all upon thee; that thou mayest give them their meat in due season. That thou givest them they gather: thou openest shine hand, they are filled with good” (Ps. 104:27, 28).
Norman Grubb shares a good word on the principle of labor and rest: “Take as an example the learning of a foreign language. You are faced with a series of hieroglyphics in a book, you hear a mealy of sounds around, which mean absolutely nothing. Yet you know that it is a language that can be learned. More than that, you have gone there to learn it. Now that is the first rung in the ladder of faith. However weak or waveringly, in your heart you do believe that you can and will get it. Otherwise, obviously you wouldn’t try to learn it. So you plod on. Many a time faith and courage fail, the mind is weary and the heart is heavy, and you almost give up. But not quite. To give up is faith’s unforgiveable sin. On you go at it. Months pass. It seems largely to go in one ear and out the other. Then—the length of time depends on the difficulty of the language and the ability and industry of the pupil of course—a miracle seems to happen. The day or period comes when, without your hardly realizing it, what you are seeking has found you; what you are trying to grasp has grasped you! You just begin automatically to speak the language, to think it, to hear it. What was an incomprehensible jumble of sounds without, has become an ordered language within the mind.
“So, in the spiritual labor of faith, the moment or period comes when we know. Every vestige of strain and labor is gone. Indeed, faith, as such, is not felt or recognized any more. The channel is lost sight of in the abundance of the supply. As we came to know that we were children of God by an inner certainty, a witness of the Spirit in our spirits; so now we come to know that the old ‘I’ is crucified with Christ, the new ‘I’ has Christ as its permanent life, spirit with Spirit have been fused into one; the branch grafted into the vine; the member joined to the body, the problem of abiding becomes as natural as breathing.” …..to be continued
