God, the Master, The Holy of Israel,
has this solemn counsel:
“Your salvation requires you to turn back to me
and stop your silly efforts to save yourselves.
Your strength will come from settling down
in complete dependence on me—
The very thing
you’ve been unwilling to do. Isaiah 30:15-17, The Message
For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God;for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience.
As I finish preparations to head to Oak Mountain Pres on Friday for the Gospel-Call to Women retreat, I am reflecting again on rest as the essence of worship — returning to God, resting in God’s favor. Here’s a recycled post that brings together the ideas of kingdom-calling, rest, and worship:
This is the culmination of our time together. The two passages quoted are great reminders of where we’ve been, where we are now, and where we’re going. We are called to live and work in the kingdom; we are called to do so through resting in the finished work of Christ. In order to rest, we must remember both the past and the future. To remember redemption in the past is the basis of our faith. To remember resurrection and restoration in the future is the basis of our hope. We must remember God’s Big Story and the particular stories He is writing in us to rest in the present.
When we remember, not only do we rest, but we also restore. We hear our call to live as kingdom servants, and we see every moment and every setting in its possibility for restoration. It can be as simple as a highly educated pediatrician who engages a young private she meets in an aiport eatery. She offers a kind word to this soldier more wounded by the war of living in his own family than by the war he has fought overseas . It can be as complex as designing a community of beautiful and livable homes in the hard section of town. As long as we are living in the memory of the anticipated day to come and working to bring Christ to the broken-hearted, it doesn’t really matter how simple or complex, how acclaimed or unnoticed our kingdom work is.
When we remember, we also re-member. (This idea offered to me by Rev. Scotty Smith, who gave me permission to use it.) When we remember that redemption accomplished reconciliation for us, we rest in that reconciliation and we work toward reconciliation with friends and enemies. We remember that one day we will re-member with every tribe, tongue, nation, and people group for an eternal story of kingdom worship, and we work toward building that community now.
In remembrance we rest, and in remembrance we do. Because we remember what Christ has done for us, we drink his body and eat his blood. We do so to remember that we can rest from our labors to be acceptable in God’s sight. And in resting from our labors to be acceptable in his sight, we are freed to labor and love for the sake of spreading the good news of this kingdom to others. As you eat the body and drink the blood, Christ says, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
