Resting or Rusting?

(Where is the God of our Salvation? - Part 5)

by Mike Rule

There is controversy surrounding the topic of resting in Christ.  Many people believe, either knowingly or unknowingly, that resting means there is NO human effort or activity in the Christian life.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Jesus made it clear that apart from Him we can do nothing (John 15:5). For the past five years I have offered $1000.00 to anyone who can find a Scripture passage that says we can depend upon God too much.  Of all the places I have taught, counseled, and traveled, no one has claimed that money.  In fact, no one ever will legitimately be able to do so because God NEVER says we can depend upon Him too much.  The Christian life is a life of God-dependence. Yet many of us believe that God only helps those who help themselves.  Where does Scripture say that?

Granted, there is danger in living a life of rest because it is easy to slip into passivity.  Our attitude can subtly shift from knowing that apart from Jesus we can do nothing to believing we should literally be doing nothing.  For many of the believers with which I am connected, “doing” has become a bad word because it is associated with earning salvation.  However, it says in James that we are to SHOW our faith by what we do.  Faith and works cooperate together to demonstrate Jesus to the world!  In contrast, a passive person is complacent or unwilling to act for fear of doing something wrong rather than being open and responsive to God. 

Faith does not generate the work of God.  Faith is a receptor enabling me to RECEIVE the things of God.  When we look at Abraham’s life we do not see a man who initiated a relationship with God. We see a man who was responsive to God’s promptings and words as they flowed out of intimacy with God.  For example, Abraham did not wake up one morning deciding to demonstrate his love and devotion to God by killing his son Isaac.  It was God who initiated the whole thing!  And Abraham’s willingness to trust and receive what God had in store for him – his faith – was accounted to him for righteousness.

God works through our natural talents, abilities and interests, yet because of our past experiences we are often afraid of potentially impure motives, doing things in our own strength, and taking the Kingdom by force.  The end result is a refusal to believe that God could ever be in anything we desire to do.  God cannot lead a sheep that is not willing to move.  He has given us freedom, desire, and ability.  He wants to work through those things to do what we could never do in our own strength.  Yes, at times we will run ahead of Him. At other times we may wander off a bit, but it is the shepherd’s job to lead the sheep. Which takes greater faith: to be passive and unwilling to move unless God shoves us ahead, or take action and trust Him to open and close doors to lead us, knowing that we may be getting things all wrong?

As crazy as it sounds, resting is active. It trusts the Father to be the inspiration, initiation, and motivation of our thoughts and ideas. Of course we are going to make mistakes, but being passive is just as big a mistake as going in a wrong direction.  It takes great faith to move forward and trust that God works ALL things together (even our blunders) for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Resting in Christ is the hardest work a person will ever do. It means letting go of our craving to be right and do the right thing.  It is giving up our own agendas and the yearning to force our way in a given direction.  It is letting go of our own assumptions and simply trusting in all and through all.  The passive life is one in which I sit around and rust, while the life of faith – trusting Christ in ALL things -- is a life in which I choose to rest in spite of all my fears and feelings while moving ahead in Him. So what is it going to be for you: rust or rest?

(Next week we will continue this series by looking at Passivity vs. Waiting )

Verses for Reflection

To these [complaining Jews the Lord] had said, This is the true rest [the way to true comfort and happiness] that you shall give to the weary, and, This is the [true] refreshing--yet they would not listen [to His teaching]. Therefore the word of the Lord will be to them [merely monotonous repeatings of]: precept upon precept, precept upon precept, rule upon rule, rule upon rule; here a little, there a little--that they may go and fall backward, and be broken and snared and taken. (Isaiah 28:12-13 AMP)

Come to Me all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke on you and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest to your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light. (Matthew 11:28-30 MKJV)

And so I was provoked (displeased and sorely grieved) with that generation, and said, They always err and are led astray in their hearts, and they have not perceived or recognized My ways and become progressively better and more experimentally and intimately acquainted with them. Accordingly, I swore in My wrath and indignation, They shall not enter into My rest. [Ps. 95:7-11.] [Therefore beware] Brethren, take care, lest there be in any one of you a wicked, unbelieving heart [which refuses to cleave to, trust in, and rely on Him], leading you to turn away and desert or stand aloof from the living God. But instead warn (admonish, urge, and encourage) one another every day, as long as it is called Today, that none of you may be hardened [into settled rebellion] by the deceitfulness of sin [by the fraudulence, the stratagem, the trickery which the delusive glamor of his sin may play on him]. For we have become fellows with Christ (the Messiah) and share in all He has for us, if only we hold our first newborn confidence and original assured expectation [in virtue of which we are believers] firm and unshaken to the end. Then while it is [still] called Today, if you would hear His voice and when you hear it, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion [in the desert, when the people provoked and irritated and embittered God against them]. [Ps. 95:7, 8.] (Hebrews 3:10-15 AMP)