Making Every Effort to Enter God's Rest
There's a profound paradox woven throughout Scripture that challenges our understanding of the Christian life: we must make every effort to enter God's rest. At first glance, this seems contradictory. How can rest require effort? Yet this tension reveals something essential about faith, belief, and the abundant life God offers His people.
The Wilderness Generation's Warning
The book of Hebrews draws our attention to a sobering moment in Israel's history. After God miraculously delivered His people from Egyptian bondage, He led them to the edge of the Promised Land – a place flowing with milk and honey with everything He had promised them. Twelve spies were sent to scout the territory, and they returned with a unanimous report: everything God said about the land was true.
But there was a problem. Ten of the twelve spies saw giants in the land and declared, "We looked like grasshoppers in our own sight, and those people will destroy us." Only Joshua and Caleb stood firm, insisting that if God promised the land, He would deliver it into their hands regardless of the obstacles.
The result? An entire generation forfeited their inheritance. They wandered in the wilderness for forty years, never entering the rest God had prepared for them. The reason? Unbelief led to disobedience, which God called rebellion.
The Faith That Accesses God's Power
This historical account isn't merely ancient history – it's a mirror held up to our own spiritual lives. The question confronting every believer is this: What promises of God are we forfeiting because of unbelief?
When religious leaders approached Jesus asking what works God required of them, they expected a new list of rules and regulations. Instead, Jesus gave them a revolutionary answer: "The work of God is to believe in the one He has sent." (John 6:28-29) This wasn't about religious performance or moral striving. It was about faith—the kind of faith that accesses divine power and transforms us from the inside out.
Consider Abraham and Sarah. Their bodies were "as good as dead" regarding procreation. The natural circumstances screamed impossibility. Yet because God had spoken a promise, they chose to look beyond their physical limitations to the God who has all power. They made every effort to believe, and God’s super broke into their natural. Isaac was born, and a nation came forth from elderly parents who dared to trust God's word over their circumstances.
Beyond the Foyer of Salvation
The Western church has often preached a truncated gospel – a "gospel of heaven" that invites people into the foyer of the kingdom and tells them to wait there until they die. But this isn't the gospel of the kingdom that Jesus commissioned us to preach.
Salvation isn't merely fire insurance for the afterlife. When we surrender to Jesus and receive Him by faith, eternal life enters us in that moment. We're reconciled to the living God and given access to what Scripture calls "the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints" – blessings, power, and privileges that are meant to transform every area of our earthly existence.
Second Peter tells us that by His divine power, God has given us everything we need for life and godliness. Not just spiritual things. Not just church things. Everything. God has a "land flowing with milk and honey" for your marriage, your family, your work, your finances, and every other dimension of your life. But possessing this inheritance requires faith – the kind of faith that drives out giants.
The Danger of Unbelief
Throughout Scripture, God's response to unbelief ranges from irritation to outright anger. Why? Because unbelief is a statement against His character, His faithfulness, His very nature.
When Sarah laughed at God's promise of a son, God confronted her disbelief and named her son Isaac—"he laughs"—as a perpetual reminder. When Moses questioned where God would get meat for the people in the desert, God challenged him: "Is my hand too short to fulfill what my mouth has spoken?" When a desperate father brought his demonized son to Jesus and said, "If you can do anything," Jesus stopped and addressed the "if" before casting out the demon, declaring, "All things are possible to him who believes."
The pattern is clear: God takes unbelief seriously because it hinders His people from entering into all He has prepared for them. The Israelites couldn't enter the Promised Land because of unbelief. Not because God was withholding something, but because they refused to trust Him enough to step forward.
The One Work That Matters
If there's one work we must focus on, it's the work of believing—of abiding in Christ by faith and activating His presence and power in us and through us. This isn't about legalistic Bible reading to "keep the devil away" or checking off spiritual disciplines like items on a to-do list.
Reading God's Word is about discovering His goodness, His will, and the new covenant realities that belong to us in Christ. It's about accessing the mind of God so we can live in the mind of Christ. When we see areas where God has something for us that we're not experiencing, we're called to come out of the desert and enter the Promised Land in that area of life—and we'll need to fight for it.
Come and Find Rest
Jesus extends an invitation that echoes through the ages: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." (Matthew 11:28-30)
This rest isn't passivity or inaction. It's the rest that comes from trusting God completely—from stepping out of religious striving and self-reliance into the power and presence that is already ours in Christ. It's ceasing from our own works, just as God rested from His, and allowing Christ to live in us and through us. This is the ultimate fulfilment of the Sabbath commandment!
The promise of entering His rest still stands. Let us make every effort to enter that rest, not through human striving but through faith in the One who is faithful. The land flowing with milk and honey awaits—not just in eternity, but in every area of life where we dare to believe God and step forward in faith.