The Power of Rest

Most of us have had the experience of coming back from a relaxing vacation feeling refreshed, energized, and having fresh perspective.  I experienced this after coming back from North Padre Island in Texas, where the beaches seem to go forever and the ocean water was warm and inviting.  Taking time for physical rest, relaxing, and reflecting on life is so revitalizing yet what is true in the natural is true in the spiritual.  Learning how to live from a place of rest with God dwelling in us is so important for our well-being.

In Genesis God creates the heavens, the earth, the animals, the plants, and all that is within it.  After God creates on the seventh day He rests, He sanctifies and blesses that day (Sabbath).  God will always bless our rest because we are entering into the place He is, since after Jesus completed His work on the cross and ascended to the right hand of God He sat down.  Ephesians 2:6 tells us that we are "and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus".  This is a passage that mirrors Genesis 2, we are to begin our new life "in Christ" from a place of being seated where we don't work for salvation.  God works and then He rests.  We are to rest and then work from a place of rest.

Psalm 46:10 says, "Be still and know that I am God."  Resting is all about being aware of God, connect to His Presence, and receiving from Him.  I have found when I am working for what Father has already purchased for me "in Christ" then I am focused on myself, resent God at times, and have a hard time hearing Him.  As we learn to cultivate the "secret place" of rest and peace with Father, then we can live from this place of dwelling "in Christ".  So many times people are wrestling to get something from God, when resting and trusting by faith actually draws what they are looking for.  You came into the Kingdom of God by grace, do we really grow in the Kingdom by anxiously working, striving, or earning.

I believe there are treasures that God has for us as we position our hearts in a place of rest to receive from Him.  He has everything good-peace, joy, love, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, and self-control to mention a few.  Even physical rest is one of the ways that we promote healing, health, and overall well-being.  Yet we are so often deceived to believe that our performance, striving, earning, pushing, self-effort is going to bring us the treasures of the Kingdom.

Be at Peace,
Bret

Honesty with Father

I have met with many people who struggle to admit that they are angry with God, because we are not supposed to be angry with God.  It was Teresa of Avila who once said to God, "If this is how you treat your friends, no wander you have so many enemies."  She was a person who knew God deeply and saw many miracles.  Jesus addressed this issue when He spoke to the Pharisees about how they prayed and that they used flowery language to impress.  Jesus highlighted in a story that the man who beat his chest and felt so unworthy to receive was the one who would receive.

Is Father really impressed by our spiritual language, our prayers that we pray because we believe we are showing God's power, or our hiding our true condition of our soul's temper tantrums.  I believe any time you are in a church culture, a religious mindset is a temptation.  This is not real intimacy or relationship with God but something that appears like you are spiritual but really has no substance.  It was refreshing to sit down with friends, ministry partners, and peers to talk about rest.  Even though the Father has given me wisdom and insight in this area, I have more disappointments, frustrations, and barriers than success.  The refreshing was being able to be honest with Father about those but also with others.

Self-pity and the victim attitude are dangerous territory to inhabit but to steer so clear of them that we live in the land of "fine" with flowery Christian ease is equally as lethal to true relationship with Father.  Is God really scared of your secret frustration with Him, your disappointment, your fears that He won't come through, your questions about why things happen in your life, or even the pain of His seeming absence.  Do we have an overly sensitive, touching, insecure, and weak Father?  Jesus is the exact representation of Father, Jesus entered into the smelly, dirty, gritty, sinful, raw, and often contentious reality of an occupied Israel with all the Roman brutality.  I never see Jesus shocked by people's sin, overwhelmed by the demons they carry, deterred by the their lack of knowing who He was, or even offended by their lack of respect for Him.

I believe God loves when we get honest and real without making excuses to stay stuck or looking for God to validate our self-pity.  I believe true spirituality must have an element of rawness.  Jesus shows up in the middle of people's pain, unbelief, sin, anger, distaste for religion, and even their outright rejection of God.  We have been given permission through Jesus Christ to get real.  Couldn't God have made all those people bow down and worship Jesus.  Absolutely, but then love does not exist because real love requires the freedom to choose.  The freedom to choose means the freedom to reject.  Jesus walked right into our rejection of Him with a bold love that was unstoppable and captivating.

In Father's Love,
Bret

Overcoming Negatives in Our Lives

Sometimes the negatives in life seem overwhelming, whether it be difficult circumstances, problems in relationships, financial issues, personal habits that we aren't overcoming, or losses that enter our life.  These negatives put pressure on our identity and areas of weakness, insecurity, fears, deception get exposed.  Jesus said in John 16:33, "In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”  Our world can be a very trying place at times putting pressure on who we believe we are.  Character is not achieved but revealed and then appropriated into our lives.

I have often wandered how it is true that "God causes all things to work together for our good...", later in this passage it talks about us being conformed to the image of Christ.  How exactly does this work and how do we partner with God?  Father has provided a way for us to partner with Him by giving us a promise that is the opposite of the negative in our life.  There are over 750 promises in the New Testament.  These are doorways into overcoming negatives in our lives.  The Holy Spirit is amazing at showing us how to move in the opposite spirit and discovering who God is for us in our circumstance, difficulty, or trial.

Instead of remaining in orphan thinking, the promises of God call us out to a whole new realm of living in union with God.  Jesus said He overcame the world, we don't overcome in our own strength but on reliance on who He is for us.  Promises open us up to the joy of who God is for us in where we are in life.  If we continue in our old orphan ways of thinking, we will get what we have gotten in the past.  We can't think like an orphan and live like a son.  We must adopt a new way of thinking as a son or daughter united to Christ through the indwelling Holy Spirit.

This is not something we achieve by striving, we learn to receive as we quiet ourselves to come before Him to receive meditating on the Promise He gives us and the new thoughts He gives.  What if we came to a point in life where we could actually find joy when we are bombarded with life's negatives because of who God is for us and the upgrade we are receiving to our identity.

Overcoming in Him,
Bret