January Bible insights
15/11/2018 - Hebrews 4:11
'Let us therefore strive to enter that rest' (ESV)
'Let us therefore strive to enter that rest' (ESV)
So, there you are, sitting at home minding your own business. It’s been a difficult day. Guilt has wormed its way in, and, try as you might, it just won’t shift. There is a knock at the door. You open it and there stands Jesus. He says to you, ‘I have a message for you – you are free’. And then he’s gone.
What are you going to do with that? It sounds good but what does “free” look like? 'What do I have to do?' 'I must try and understand what it means to be free'. Soon the beautiful flower that you had been handed is reduced to a pile of lifeless petals because it couldn’t just be accepted. It had to be analysed and dissected till there was no beauty left. Is that what you do?
Perhaps you would think, ‘Jesus got the wrong person. He clearly called at the wrong address and that’s why he went so quickly. Good things like that don’t happen to me.’ Or, ‘I have no idea what to do with that, so I will park it and get on with the rest of my life.’
It doesn’t have to be about freedom. I know a lady who struggled with feeling loved and accepted so she got into awful muddles in her mind. As a farmer’s wife she was not prone to flights of fancy but she told me that one day she was in her kitchen and Jesus appeared to her at the other end of her long farmhouse table. She said that she knew it was him because she felt his total love and acceptance. She felt the benefit of that for a while – until her mind took over and she tried to work it all out.
What is Jesus standing at your door and saying to you - perhaps directly into your heart and mind, perhaps through someone who knows you well? Take his words as a declaration of the way things are. Accept them as true because they are true. You are free, you are loved, you are safe. Perhaps it involves a call on your life or the assurance that you are equipped to be a good husband, wife, brother, sister etc.
‘Strive to enter that rest’ not, ‘strive to create that rest.’ The striving is to put out of the way anything and everything that stands between you and the simple enjoyment of the word that Jesus brings. Understanding yourself is only a means to that end of putting out of our lives everything that does not belong to the kingdom of God and his reign in our lives.
What did Jesus say to you when he knocked on your door? Live in it.
What are you going to do with that? It sounds good but what does “free” look like? 'What do I have to do?' 'I must try and understand what it means to be free'. Soon the beautiful flower that you had been handed is reduced to a pile of lifeless petals because it couldn’t just be accepted. It had to be analysed and dissected till there was no beauty left. Is that what you do?
Perhaps you would think, ‘Jesus got the wrong person. He clearly called at the wrong address and that’s why he went so quickly. Good things like that don’t happen to me.’ Or, ‘I have no idea what to do with that, so I will park it and get on with the rest of my life.’
It doesn’t have to be about freedom. I know a lady who struggled with feeling loved and accepted so she got into awful muddles in her mind. As a farmer’s wife she was not prone to flights of fancy but she told me that one day she was in her kitchen and Jesus appeared to her at the other end of her long farmhouse table. She said that she knew it was him because she felt his total love and acceptance. She felt the benefit of that for a while – until her mind took over and she tried to work it all out.
What is Jesus standing at your door and saying to you - perhaps directly into your heart and mind, perhaps through someone who knows you well? Take his words as a declaration of the way things are. Accept them as true because they are true. You are free, you are loved, you are safe. Perhaps it involves a call on your life or the assurance that you are equipped to be a good husband, wife, brother, sister etc.
‘Strive to enter that rest’ not, ‘strive to create that rest.’ The striving is to put out of the way anything and everything that stands between you and the simple enjoyment of the word that Jesus brings. Understanding yourself is only a means to that end of putting out of our lives everything that does not belong to the kingdom of God and his reign in our lives.
What did Jesus say to you when he knocked on your door? Live in it.
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