God Has Rest for You
Hebrews 4:8-11
8 Devote your whole heart to obeying God and His Word. Trust Him to do the things He says He will do. 9 There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. 10 For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. 11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest.
I don’t know about you, but there have been many times in my life that I have given something over to the Lord in prayer, and almost immediately after I have finished praying, I have picked that prayer request right back up again and have kept carrying and mulling it around in my mind to the point of distraction and worry. Verse 11 uses the word “diligent.” This word in the Greek means to “enter” that rest. Galatians 2:10 says, “They desired only that we should remember the poor, the very thing which I also was eager to do.” “Eager” in this verse, means to exert oneself, make every effort, make haste, be jealous, strain every nerve. It combines thinking and acting, planning and producing. Hebrews 4:12 tells us that “God is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” The strong message in these verses is that there is a rest in the Lord when we come to Him and lay our concerns at His feet. It truly is a “laboring into the rest,” which in truth and reality is two opposite actions—laboring and resting. Yet our heavenly Father wants us to be “diligent to enter that rest.” Our Father wants to carry every burden and concern for us. He tells us, “The battle is not yours, it’s the Lord’s” Easy to say, hard to completely relinquish. We say we trust Him, yet why do we constantly find ourselves carrying, and worrying and fretting over our concerns? I Thessalonians 1:3 talks about the patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. Hope is the sense of confident expectation based on God’s promises. We must learn to practice keeping our minds upon God and His Word. He tells us His ways are perfect; His timing is perfect and He will make our way perfect. I have had instances in my life that if God had answered my prayer at the time I wanted it to, it would have hindered growth in the person I was praying for, or it would not have worked out for good if He had answered my prayer too early. Many things take time to process and develop at just the right pace. The Lord tells us that “His thoughts are not our thoughts, and His ways are not our ways.” Like the old television show many years ago, even before my time entitled, “Father Knows Best.” How true this is—our heavenly Father knows best. We would be wise to take our concerns to Him and also confess our trust in His perfect timing and His perfect ways. Your faith is evident even as you come to Him in prayer, giving it over to Him. Enter into His rest, His timing and His way. Your answers to prayer are on the way. Stand in His liberty and peace today.
What about you? Are you wobbly in your faith that your answers to prayer are on the way? Labor back into His rest. He wants you to have His peace that passes all understanding. Your answers to prayer are on the way. Be blessed and at peace in Him today.
