The Rest of Faith

Faith happens each day. One of the main reasons our faith fails is we look too far ahead. We don't need to borrow worry from tomorrow about how we will manage, what will happen, what we will choose.

Matthew 6:31-34 NKJV — “Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ “For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. “Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Making today's choices in faith is much easier when tomorrow's trouble stays there. If I start trying to address tomorrow's trouble with today's choices I easily get confused by my emotions and wrong understanding of what will happen... This causes me to compromise faith with logic.

James 4:13-14 NKJV — Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.

If I listen to God today and leave the future to Him, He is faithful to line me up with a future I'm not supposed to know. God always keeps His words. We just don't know how. His ways are different than ours:

Isaiah 55:8-9 NKJV — “For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.

Today, I can listen to God and enter into today's rest. Then I can do the same thing tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after.

Hebrews 4:1-11 NKJV — Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it. For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it. For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said:

“So I swore in My wrath,
‘They shall not enter My rest,’ ”

although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. For He has spoken in a certain place of the seventh day in this way: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works”; and again in this place: “They shall not enter My rest.” Since therefore it remains that some must enter it, and those to whom it was first preached did not enter because of disobedience, again He designates a certain day, saying in David, “Today,” after such a long time, as it has been said:

“Today, if you will hear His voice,
Do not harden your hearts.” 

For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have spoken of another day. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.

The rest the writer of Hebrews is speaking of is resting from striving to figure out, lead, and save our own lives!

Look at the fall of man in Genesis 3... Satan enticed Adam and Eve out of depending on God by putting their future in front of them. God had already made them in His image... In the image of God. God intended to transform them into His image from glory to glory forever (2 Corinthians 3:18). There were supposed to see their Father, learn from Him, and transform... Like children do.

Satan simply introduced an impatient concern about whether or not that would actually happen (to be like God) to kill their faith, their hope, and eventually their love, or obedience to God. He piled their future into their minds to get them out of daily abiding faith.

This left them hopeless. Hopeless people compromise love for security.

We are going to exist forever. In a million years, what will we eat? What will we wear? What will we do?

We have vague Biblical notions about forever but we don't really know the details. We aren't supposed to. The prophetic promises should cause us to get to know God, not the future.

2 Corinthians 12:3-5 NLT — Yes, only God knows whether I was in my body or outside my body. But I do know that I was caught up to paradise and heard things so astounding that they cannot be expressed in words, things no human is allowed to tell. That experience is worth boasting about, but I’m not going to do it. I will boast only about my weaknesses.

We will need God to provide day by day for forever. In the light of eternity, I'll get overwhelmed borrowing worry from the future. It's just too big. I wasn't made to keep myself alive. I was made to be dust without God. Dust. Doesn't. Know.

Psalm 103:13-17 NKJV — As a father pities his children,
So the LORD pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame;
He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass;
As a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
And its place remembers it no more. But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting
On those who fear Him,
And His righteousness to children’s children,

Every heart is tempted to figure out the future... Wonder what people think of them... Strive to manipulate the unseen, heap up for the unknown, defend against what might happen... This is where fights and quarrels come from. This is the origin of wars. We want but don't ask. We try to will our future into existence without really knowing the future!

I don't have to be weighed down by the things I cannot see. There is only one unseen thing I am supposed to learn to see: God. Our obsession with the unseen has to be turned to God or it will turn us away from God.

I can reel it all back to today. God has everything I need for today, just like yesterday, and the day before, and the day before....

Faith is found in abiding in God. God isn't in a hurry. He isn't running out of time. He's good. He's faithful. He has never failed.

This burden is light and the yoke is easy if I learn to abide in Him today. Running ahead of God wears me out and makes me a terrible witness of God's leadership. Dragging my feet from walking with Him also wears me out and compromises my witness. Yoked to him... step by step... This is rest for the soul and a life that glorifies God, not me.

To just live today with God is all that is required. I have no idea what tomorrow holds and I don't need to. I just need to know the one who holds tomorrow!