What is the Sabbath Rest?

Therefore, since the promise of entering his rest still stands, let us be careful that none of you be found to have fallen short of it. 2 For we also have had the good news proclaimed to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because they did not share the faith of those who obeyed.[a] 3 Now we who have believed enter that rest, just as God has said, “So I declared on oath in my anger,

‘They shall never enter my rest.’” (Hebrews 4:1-3) The Sabbath rest is a day, but it is also a condition of our faith and our standing before God. Until we rest in God, we will ever be restless, as St. Augustine said, (Our heart is restless until it rests in you.) Faith that refuses to believe cannot be rewarded by God, and unless we truly believe, we won’t find the rest that God is trying to bring us to. We won’t fully understand what faith is unless we abandon ourselves to the truth that God is trying to teach us.

When we are tested by hardship, we need to let that hardship lead us to Christ. It’s when we persist and refuse the help of God, that we fail to enter the rest of faith. Being too busy to seek the Lord puts us on bad terms with God, we actually end up fighting what God is trying to do in our lives. You fail to live by faith when you show by your actions that you don’t really love God, what makes you think that God will forgive you when he isn’t the first love of your life?

God desires the time and love of his creatures but we must freely give it. The recipe for a miserable life is to put yourself and your desires above your love for God. Unless we realize that our lives only have purpose in the Lord, we will keep on living for ourselves. No one will force you to have faith, this is the test of humanity. God is ever patient with us, waiting for our love, and we must not take our cues from an unbelieving society and world, we must take our cues from a believing faith.

Heaven and Hell wait in the balance.

Comments

Catholic Identity.

I was born into the Catholic Church and was baptized as an infant, I had my first communion and reconciliation as a child, and was confirmed as a teenager. Although I was never devout, I accepted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour when I was 21 through an evangelical Christian radio ministry, which in turn gave new life to my Catholic faith. Although I remained a Catholic, I identified as a born again Christian. It wasn’t until much later in my life that I learned the difference between the two denominations and what they taught about being born again. Regardless, there was a significant change in my life back then, which continues to this day. Being Catholic is much like an identity to me and I remember growing up under the papacy of St. Pope John Paul II. The culture I grew up in was largely affected by his papacy, and the way the culture viewed the church was significantly different from the way the current culture views it. Growing up, the pope didn’t try to be rele...

Age of Brokenness.

We are living in an age of brokenness, no matter what age you are, you probably have been touched with relationships falling apart, which causes more and more people to live in isolation. In this generation there is less of an incentive to heal and reconcile relationships, but that doesn’t excuse the amount of people who are broken. Why people don’t seem to be motivated to heal relationships is because our beliefs about faith and God have changed, really giving us less of an incentive to do what our religion says. If I act from my personal beliefs, but the person that I am responding to has abandoned religious beliefs, than the response to my wanting things to be better can be misinterpreted and rejected then by someone else. Generally when a society has expectations about broken relationships, loneliness and isolation, and the beliefs are generally accepted, society becomes a more compassionate society, because all value the same things. When religious values are undermined and ...

The Biblical Meaning of “Life in the Spirit.”

“Life in the Spirit” is an example that the Apostle Paul gives in the book of Romans starting in chapter 5 and going through to chapter 8. He begins by telling us we are justified by faith (5:1), and have gained access by faith into the grace of God (5:2). We have been delivered from God’s wrath (5:9) and we have been reconciled to God through the death of His Son (5:10). He goes on to explain that through Adam all die (5:12), and that the free Gift of God brings justification and righteousness to the believing sinner (5:15-17). Through our conversion we are baptized into Christ and into his death, which frees us from the law and makes us dead to sin (6:2-4). He explains that just as Christ was raised from the dead, we are given new life in Christ (6:4). Our old unregenerate self was crucified with Christ so that our body of sin might be done away with (6:5-6). Because we have died to sin, we now submit ourselves to God being that we are now under grace, not the law (6:8-1...

The Super Blogosphere of a parallel word.

Search This Blog