Daily Devotional September 11 - Have you ceased from your own works?

Before we get started I want to send a note of condolences to those who lost loved ones in the 911 attacks.  Many people were directly or indirectly affected by this heinous crime against the innocent.  At times like this when things go awry it can affect your faith.  I would not diminish the motives of those who are trying to find a faith solution to such awful circumstances and come up short on answers.  Sometimes your faith is tested through circumstances like these, but in and through it all, God provides comfort and renewed faith as you draw closer to understanding that your faith is in a Holy God, not in the cowardly acts of wicked, deranged and god-less men.

"Let us therefore fear, lest (for fear that) a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any of you should seem to come short of it....There remaineth a rest to the people of God. For he that entered into his rest, he also ceased from his own works, as God did from His."  Hebrews 4:1, 9-10

This 'rest' is a gift to you from God. It requires that you enter in. It requires that you believe that it is available and that you can enter in, however it requires nothing from you. This is possibly my favorite attribute of the Christian life. Let's look at some of the factors of the Christian life to see where the 'rest' of God fits in.

• You were lost
• You were invited into the kingdom of God by Father God
• You accepted
• You are adopted into the beloved
• You are now living in grace
• You are growing in Christ and learning and working and wondering and finding; an adventure to say the least
• You run across new truths, new to you, not new to God.
• You attempt to operate in these new truths and you find that all truths of God work; some might be a little unpleasant, in that they might take you out of your comfort zone, but you recognize the value and attempt to stay faithful to the precepts as they are exposed and understood.
• You see glimpses of the power of God operating in you and through you
• You start to feel the spiritual connection between God and yourself and you start to understand that God designed for you to be set apart for use and you start to feel how God sanctifies you.
• You grasp the concepts of salvation, sanctification, grace, forgiveness, mercy, power and true love.
• You live out what you believe over and over again and you realize this is the better life.
• You do this and you do that in the name of the Lord, trying to do the right thing, be where you are needed and follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.
• The deeper life becomes a thing.
• You see the end from the beginning so you make wiser decisions
• You see how the spiritual world and the physical world are intricately woven together
• You speak words that build up
• You aren't comfortable around nasty shop talk and mumblings about others and gossip
• You've given up those things that work against your soul
• You love the Lord
• You might be spoken against and suffer exclusion by those who you trusted
• You might be attacked by those who love you and discredited by those who are jealous of you
• But all the while you see God's hand at work in your life
• Then you go deeper
• You are flushed by the peace of God
• You can hear the voice of God speaking into your inner man
• You desire to know God better and seek to have and behold the things of God
• You finally get it, grace is unmerited favor and you can't work or do anything to cause God to love you any more or to be higher up the ladder with God, so to speak
• The word obedience doesn't freak you out anymore, instead you now have a propensity to find out more about the economy of God, pursue it and operate in it
• You think about God a lot and you sense His presence more and more
• Your not afraid to go into the presence of God and have Him burn up what you once thought was really something
• You have died to self. It's not just a saying, but you get it.
• You invite God into everything, before you begin
• And deeper still
• All that happens, all that you do, all that is done to you, all fits and you have a knowing.
• You have ceased from your works being outside of what God is doing in you and through you.

You are at 'rest' with God.