Enter into My rest!
Recently, during my morning time with God he said to me so clearly: "Enter into My rest."
Wanting to understand more about what He meant, I devoured the book of Hebrews because in chapter 4 verse 1 it launches into the topic: “God’s promise of entering his rest still stands, so we ought to tremble with fear that some of you might fail to experience it.” Then, when I got to these verses the text jumped off the page:
Hebrews 4:7b
“Today when you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.”
Hebrews 12:25
“Be careful that you do not refuse to listen to the One who is speaking. For if the people of Israel did not escape when they refused to listen to Moses, the earthly messenger, we will certainly not escape if we reject the One who speaks to us from heaven!"
Putting on the "lens" that we are able to freely communicate with the spirit of God and hear His voice today (since He is the living God after all) these kinds of verses come to life. And there are a lot of them!
I feel like God is revealing a bigger picture about "entering into His rest" and what that means for us today. He is showing us that as we listen to what He is actively saying and walk in obedience to that in faith, then we are able to enter into His rest, which is our “promised land.” The reason taking possession of our promise is synonymous with entering into His rest is because He already prepared it for us, it is already “finished,” and He’s the one doing it through us in Divine Partnership as we walk it out (like how He took down the walls of Jericho )
The fundamental part of this equation is "listening" to what He is saying to us right now, today. Just like all the people who lived great examples of faith recorded in the Bible (listed in Hebrews 11) - each one of them heard God speak to them individually in an encounter. As they believed and acted on what He told them, they were credited with faith that pleased God—and they entered into His rest!
I believe this is a huge invitation for the body of Christ in this season, and each one of us have our own unique promise that He is inviting us into. I am certainly living in it right now, and I feel the choice to enter in, or the option to hold back choosing fear and “safety.” Hence the warning, that we do have the option of hardening our hearts and completely missing out.
And here’s the kicker…(but wait, there’s more!!!)
Knowing how hard it would be for us to have faith when we aren’t seeing the results yet, Jesus even offers His help to uphold our part of the deal. Hebrews 12:1b-2 says: “And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.”
This arrangement is so lopsided in our favor it is absolutely ludicrous! How could we not take Him up on it? I am so excited about this concept that I created a fun little video of what Jesus might sound like if he were talking to you today about this. Enjoy!