MY LIFE: #55 Fruit of My Identity
Dr. Stephen Phinney: Growing up in a home that produces unrest creates bad habits of unrest in all indwelt believers.
EXPERIENCING THE FRUIT OF IDENTITY
"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. ‘Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and YOU WILL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS.”
(Mat 11:28-30)
Any person who claims to have the Life of Christ living within them should have a passion and desire to come to Christ when they are weary and heavy-hearted.
Jesus wants to give His Bride rest when we feel stressed or not. We need to have a Christ-as-Life view of life and not a self-focused view. We should not allow anything or anyone to steal our rest – that’s idolatry. We need to admit when we are not resting and ask him to manifest His peace through us.
It is imperative that we allow Christ to bring all those who reach out to us into a place of rest. As servants, be willing to be released to live IN the present, IN obedience, confront those who are self-focused, and be challenged to shift our focus to Christ, who lives in and through the believer.
After reading the above statement, it is easy to see that resting in Christ is crucial for the believer’s daily living. All believers get overwhelmed by life’s situations and circumstances. All need to see life from God’s perspective, through Christ in the believer. Anytime an indwelt believer is stressed-out, uptight, by walking after the flesh -needs to be brought back to the basics of Christ in you. When we get stressed, we are living either in the past or the future. As humans, trusting Christ with the present & future is an impossible task. This is why it takes Christ in us - living in the present, while releasing “control” over the future.
Christ lived/lives a life of rest.
Becoming weary is the result of trying to stand in God’s “shoes” without His resources. We cannot rest when we have taken on God’s responsibilities. Coming to Him means to abandon self-control and releasing His Life TO have His rightful place within us (Matt. 11:28-30). Learning from Him means allowing Him to renew our minds, which is a completely different way of thinking!
Christ has a lowly heart - a selfless life. Self-interest literally destroys the believer’s life. Loving others above self - breeds life and frees us to rest. It is the pursuit of self-interest that prevents us from resting in Christ (Phil. 2:3-4). Jesus chose to give up His reputation by humbling Himself. No one could destroy His reputation nor humiliate Him because of this.
The KEY to a restful life is allowing Him to make the same choice through us. Doing this, we won’t have to live trying to maintain our reputation and/or protect ourselves.
How lowly are you?
Believers can rest because God is in control. God wants His children to rest and makes His rest available to all indwelt believers through the indwelling Life of Christ. Worry, anger, or frustration will steal Christ’s rest in the believer (Heb. 4:9-11). When indwelt Christians rest, they cease from their own labors because Christ has finished all the work. He didn’t leave a single action for us to complete outside of obedience. Those who worry still believe there is work to be done. What an illusion that is! Laboring to rest is done by accepting the Truth, which is accepting Christ within to do the work.
The believer’s life belongs to our Husband – Jesus Christ. Once we truly embrace this, we can choose to receive all circumstances as from God, rather than just enduring or fighting against them. God possesses all strength (through Christ), all wisdom, and all knowledge. He is more than willing to manifest these within the believer. Anytime believers choose to rest, they stop exhausting themselves by trying to have control.
Growing up in a home that produces unrest creates bad habits of unrest in all authentic believers. Fully knowing that the enemy uses our past (pre-saved) environment to form fleshly habits. It doesn’t make it any easier to combat those nasty habits – in fact, the reality is, it takes Christ in us to victoriously conquer such battles.
Coming up next is #56, “Chaos to Rest.”
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Great post, Dr Phinney. I believe Hebrews 4 tells us that we should work at one thing: resting. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it definitely isn’t. It takes work to enter His rest, because we are bent on working for our salvation. It comes naturally to us. That, I believe is why the author of Hebrews says he “fears” that some may miss it. We want to work for salvation. God says for us to rest, because it is finished.
Thanks Stephen
I agree that "rest" is a principal foundation in how we love God, requiring trust in God and his word.
As Jesus is the Lord of The Sabbath, and as Sabbath means 'rest', then he is the Lord of REST in him.
As Hebrews says "So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God,":
The word Sabbath means rest. So it could be stated as a REST of a REST.
The actual word however is "Sabbathing"- a keeping of the Sabbath, a time of resting, but in the context of the Sabbath for the People of God.
This is talking about the seventh Day, known as Saturday, not Sunday or the first Day of the week.
The Sabbath is God's Day of Rest from creation, and it is the Day that God wants us to keep, for it is for the People of God. (Gen 2:3, Exo 20:11)
Yet most who claim to follow Christ don't keep his Sabbath day of rest, but Sunday, for which there is no commandment or direction or example from Christ or the Apostles for doing so.
They are not getting true REST as God intended, as they are not following the Lord of the Sabbath, but their own laws and their own interpretations of God's laws. (Matt 15:9 and Mark 7:7)
You said "Anytime believers choose to rest, they stop exhausting themselves by trying to have control."
This is true, if you choose to follow God's Day of Rest that he gave for all humanity to Rest upon and to keep holy as he commanded us and as Jesus and the Apostles set us the example of doing.
We need to choose to REST in the way God tells us and then we will have a true and regular rest and not get confused with our own interpretations of Gods word, by trying to control God by telling him which Day we should be resting on.
As Paul said "So indeed the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and just and good." (Rom 7:12)