Dale:
I enter into His rest with worship. I enter into his rest with acknowledgment of who He is in my life and in your life, and thanking Him for you. And I enter into saying, God, it's all about what You want. It's where we live in His rest, and it's where we live in the relationship to one another. Am I at rest in my relationship to you?
Do I question it? Do I appreciate it? I thank the Lord for you each day. I'm here because He's perfecting me, and He's perfecting you. And where is He going to perfect us? Not in our striving. He'll perfect us in our rest in Him.
Ken:
Why is rest so important? Because rest is trust. You're not leaning on your own understanding, but in all of the ways you're acknowledging Him.
You're not trusting in what you can do or not do. You're trusting in Him. And that's why the rest is is initiated. When, when you're trusting, you're resting.
Debbie:
And when you're resting, you're in the presence of the Lord.
Mike:
We don't do a thing other than have faith in His word, believe what He says, humble ourselves before Him and let Him come through and do His thing.
This word rest, when you see what's happening around, the unrest, people running around with their heads cut off like chickens. Thank you, Lord. For Your rest. Take a deep breath and just rest in all that You are and all that You're doing in and through us individually and collectively.
Ken:
We're talking about the peace of God, the rest, all that God's doing in and through us and the peace that we have because of all of that.
Everything we've learned, everything we've been through, everything that God has allowed to happen to us in our lives. You know, we're looking right at it, and it's because of all of these things that we're here. He's brought us to this place, and He has perfected and brought us into a place of freedom. Don't you love what God's doing? This is an incredible place to be in, in this day.
Dale:
You know, Ken, what you're talking about in this thing of rest, Christ said, all you who are heavy laden, come unto Me and I'll give you rest. I think that's been overused as a invitation to get saved. It's not an invitation to get saved.
It's an invitation that is very much directed to the spirit realm. I loved what they said. Instead of coming to you all are heavy laden and I'll give you rest. It says to those who have worked to exhaustion. Come on to me. Exhausted. I can identify with that, that translation. I survived years under heavy laden, but when we finally come to the place of exhaustion, When we've come to that point of exhaustion, He's there saying, come on, I'll lift you up to My right hand.
Debbie:
It's entering into His presence, into the realm of spirit, entering into the fullness of His joy, fullness of all He is. What's the opposite of rest? Struggle. I mean, it's all our flesh, our means of trying to strive to reach the presence of the Lord.
Just rest. Be still and know that He is God. Be still and know that I'm in charge. We are a conduit for His word in His presence, and we're thankful in that, and there's such a rest and a peace in that, knowing that our Lord is in control, that His lordship is over everything.
Beryl:
When we're exhausted, I think Debbie kind of hit on it, it's when we come to that point of exhausting everything that we can do, coming to the end of that, and then letting God.
The place of rest for me is Knowing that, although I feel at times that I'm just here doing nothing, that is actually the rest. There's nothing I can do anyway, other than what I'm doing. So at times I feel like I'm just doing nothing. God knows that, and if He wanted something else for me, He would have to bring it, because there's nothing I can do to make things any different.
I don't know how to make anything any different. Even though I don't realize that I'm in that rest, I think that's where God's put me. I don't know what He's going to do from here. I expect every day for some big change in my life, not necessarily my life, but my walk with Him. My relationship with Him to be something different something greater.
I can't do that It's okay, because I know that God's in control I know that what He has for me he'll bring about in the timing that suits Him I have to be happy with that.
Ken:
We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.
Barbra:
It's interesting, the world would probably not consider what we consider peace. There's such a hunger and a drive reaching for the Lord and for His kingdom, that it doesn't seem like peace to the world. For us, it's, it's the only food, the only, Life we have to see Him revealed, I think it's a piece that surpasses understanding.
Bill:
The challenges. I guess that our piece comes on the spiritual level. Peace comes from God and He is spirit. The world is looking for satisfaction on the soul level. See, they're looking for happiness. We're trying to get the earth, let's say, to say, peace is eternal. It's long, it's there. The world, for the most part, functions on temporary joy, fulfillment, or happiness. I want to be fulfilled on a soulish level, and we're saying, I want to be fulfilled on a spiritual level. And so we're asking the Lord, show us how this comes about.
Dale:
Part of peace is a smile because you're smiling because you've come to a place where the things that made you frown don't exist anymore. They don't have a part of you.
Lois:
You can smile when you can't say a word. You can smile when you cannot be heard. You can smile when it's cloudy or fair. You can smile anytime, anywhere.
