This will be short-not wordy-AMAZING, EH?? ;-)

-Just yesterday I found out I am singing lead on a song on worship team this morning and the song is a tad too high on the bridge which needs to be belted out. We don’t have time to change anything. I have sang it before but almost lost my voice when it was over. In the past I would have worried. Now things have changed and God has helping me to rest-I am more relaxed and learning when things like this happen to go back to the cross and remind myself of who I am. This gets much smaller and He gets bigger-and then when I sing I just let go and sing to Him..I want to feel His pleasure like in Keller’s sermon about Eric Liddell.

The first way rest is used: We are in a culture of performance. I can relate to what Keller is saying. I can so easily clean my home and if it isn’t perfectly clean, if there is one area of disorganization with papers or something it is hard to be content with the work that I was able to do. Also with singing. If it isn’t done well or done perfectly, I am not content. God has me in a season with four boys and a busy husband where it is impossible to have everything organized and perfectly clean all the time, and I don’t have time to really get songs down like I used to. I am learning to do my best and be content with that and rest in Him but I have to keep going back to the Gospel because I can easily forget when something happens!

When I truly rest I am free-I am no longer a slave to my work.

The second way to rest is used: God resting from all His work. God can’t get tired like we do-he never gets weary physically or emotionally. When God rested he was satisfied with what he was doing. He said it is good, it is finished. He was pleased with what he was doing and satisfied with what he had done so he put it down.

External rest from labor is not all I need, there needs to be a deep inner rest.

We rest in order to honor His image in us. Stilling the internal murmur of self reproach. Deep rest is being at rest with who you are. We don’t need to prove our self, unhappiness with who we are, working to prove ourselves to others. We will be slaves to our own expectations and others if we don’t deal with this.

The third way rest is used: Present tense-believing the Gospel brings you into that deeper rest. This is the rest we really need.

How do we do that? There is a horrible detail we will have to go through to enter this deep rest. Verse 12 the word of God is like a sharp sword and it penetrates everything. It will show me my real motivations, the real reason I do everything. When you get to that level you will feel naked before God-feel stripped, feel everything has been uncovered and laid bare-literally means naked. It is an ordeal I will need to go through-spiritual nakedness. The Word of God can reveal this. Genesis 3-Adam and Eve were naked and it wasn’t a problem. They were absolutely at rest-satisfied with who they were and it was good. But the minute we turn from God and be our own saviors and Lords at the deepest level we know we are radically unfit for the job. As a result we experience an inadequacy, not being right, acceptable..a deep feeling of spiritual nakedness-they covered up with fig leaves.

Deep down inside we know there is something wrong with us-a deep restlessness-(I know there is something wrong with me so I work hard to fix it like having a perfect home because I feel like as a mom I fail if it is not. This is a fig leaf!)

There is nothing wrong with work, but it is wrong if the reason is to feel like I am alright that will kill me because I will never ever be satisfied. When it is self justifying I will never be able to lay it down and say it is good. When you give to the poor so you can get a self image to be a good person, then it is selfishness-you are doing something for yourself more than for the poor.

What is keeping you from God’s rest is not your sin, but your good looks. The real problem is to repent for the reason you are doing everything right. It is your damnable good works that is keeping you from Him.

How do we get there to a deeper rest? The Author of rest. Everything is ‘laid bare’ before God-Go to Jesus, our high priest He was the sacrifice-he was cut off from the land of the living-radically stripped naked on the cross-he was stripped naked so we could be clothed in His righteousness. He was cut off from His source of rest so we could have rest. He was cut off so we could be brought in and when he died he said it is finished-What is finished? THE WORK OF EVERY HEART A HUMAN IS TRYING TO DO-SELF JUSTIFYING WORK, HE SAYS, I HAVE DONE IT. He says, come to me..not go to that to be justified with that type of work, come to Him.

We must keep going back to the Gospel. It is like a fire in our life. When my default mode is to forget the gospel and go back to self justification-I need to go back to the fire and remind myself who I am.