The Promised Rest
Open Your Bible
Hebrews 3:7-19, Hebrews 4:1-13, Numbers 14:20-38, 1 Peter 1:3-5
BY Erin Davis
My idea of heaven has evolved over time. As a young Christ-follower, I envisioned a rather me-centric glory, a Candy Land filled with the sweetest gifts my mind could conjure. I imagined hanging out with my heroes, lounging on comfy cumulonimbus recliners, and basking in my version of total bliss.
The longer I’ve walked with Jesus and the more I’ve searched His precious Word, the more my imaginations of heaven have shifted. It is not a place dedicated to my endless pleasure. Though God has promised it’s beyond my wildest hopes (1Corinthians 2:9), heaven is not most interested in our indulgences.
Lay your visions of just harps and angels aside and consider your eternal home with a fresh perspective. The writer of Hebrews lets us peek into the real heaven and see a place of profound rest (Hebrews 4:3,9).
While earthbound, we tend to think of rest as a feeling, a brief moment of closed eyes and relaxed shoulders, but in Christ, rest becomes a reality. And what shall we rest from? Among other things, ourselves. My heart is stirred by this thought: because heaven is a place focused on God, it is also the place where I will finally be free of me.
Rather than a scene of endless self-indulgence, Scripture promises a future where nothing is cursed by sin and brokenness (Revelation 22:3). That means a final end to our sin and selfishness, pride and pettiness, aches and pains, cancer cells and conflicts. We will finally be free of our navel-gazing because we’ll finally be fully with Jesus, freed from insecurity, greed, and our compulsion to gossip. We will rest from discouragement, defeat, and discontentment. We will rest from all jealousy, all hatred, all bitterness. We will rest from lust and self-loathing, anger, and animosity. We can live differently now, drawing on this future rest, because Christ is already at work undoing all that is broken today.
When you are weary of your sinfulness and sick and tired of being sick and tired, remember that soon enough you will see Jesus face-to-face and be fully transformed into His likeness—and that this complete work has already begun in part (2Corinthians 3:18). Life with Jesus is infinitely more than a good night’s sleep. It is exponentially better than a beach vacation. It’s a final, forever rest.
89 thoughts on "The Promised Rest"
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Amen
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Rest from myself- whoa. That hits home. How much my brain tries to control, tries to come up with better solutions than Gods, runs anxious not knowing the unknowns…It’s exhausting. How I long to rest in Jesus, in trusting that he is in control, not ME.
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Rest*
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I hadn’t finished my thought. As I am awaiting physical test, I also know that one day I will enter eternal rest. This hope of eternal rest, gets me through the days and nights that can seem almost unbearable. I pray I would set my eyes in heaven, knowing that all we struggle with in this earth is temporary. ❤️
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No. More. Anxiety. No. More. Overthinking. It’s amazing how oftentimes we are our own worst enemy, and our own biggest critics.. yet Jesus paid the price for ALL of us because He loves us THAT much! What a beautiful promise.. and so beautiful knowing how easy we have it compared to the OT times.
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@Audren: praying for Tyler and his marriage.
@Justin Viola: praying for your husband’s grandpa who is in hospice and supernatural strength for your family through this difficult season.
@Molly R: love the story you share. What a beautiful gesture. Praying for Jen.
@Alicia Gilbert: welcome back, so good to see you again. May the Lord bless you with the job and the loving & kind community in your workplace where you will prosper and grow. -
Harden not your heart if you hear His voice. May we learn to yield our wills, our hearts and our control to the Lord who has true control over all things, forfeiting our worries, anxieties and futile self-driven expectations/ambitions. Rest is a beautiful thing. You know when I look at the fall season we have now, where leaves change color and start falling down (making great mulch for garden beds), it’s the beginning of a season of rest, winter is coming when things are cold, seemingly dead on the surface with brown sticks, but in fact, things are resting and restoring underneath, preparing for spring and summer. Same for the cycles of our lives. We too need rest. There is so much labour on earth (All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing Ecclesiastes 1:8 KJV). It is okay to say no to busy activities, recognizing our seasons (while others don’t). No one will still our thoughts and calm our racing hearts for us. We have to intentionally make room –something I learnt. I love to embrace the quietness of nature and commune with the Lord for renewed strength. Let us tune in to His whispers/the still small voice, lest we miss it and waste 40 years murmuring and grieving God. The souls of men are deprived of the true rest if men are not careful with the pressure of life. Rest takes full surrender. Even the Lord requires the land be at rest on the 7th year. I heard someone who works in Agriculture sharing a scientific fact that the land will yield way better crops if it has the 7th year rest, with scientific evidence how the soil gives out certain substance. I don’t know all the details, but wow. God makes it that way to prosper the land. And God even promised the crops of 3 years on a row be given. (Then I will command my blessing upon you in the sixth year, and it shall bring forth fruit for three years- Leviticus 25:21), that is like saying, sweet child, you have been working so hard for six years, now don’t work, take a year off, and you will have income steady for the next 3 years. It takes great trust and will give great peace. Trusting God is not for the faint of heart. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will perish by following their example of disobedience (Hebrews 4:11). God is a mysterious God. All the days of my life, I have been searching for His wisdom but there is no searching Him out, but it’s a challenge that gives me great joy and meaning. Always fresh and inexhaustible revelations from the same text (bible). And all that I have found and learnt through experiential knowledge about God is He is always pure, beautiful, mysteriously merciful, ever so loving yet purposefully strict with His children for our benefits, and the things He tells us to do is of mind blowing significance if we ever come to understand the depth and width of His incredibly good purpose behind. Glory be to Him. Be blessed dear sisters.
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So true Churchmouse.
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