Learning to come into rest. One thing I need to make clear, rest is not inactivity. That’s not the kind of rest we’re talking about, and we have to learn how to rest in the newborn spirit, in Christ and allow Christ to live his life through us.
Most Christians live their lives through their soul, their own mind, through their own emotions and with their will, and the other functions of the soul.
Unfortunately, Most Christians live their life from the outer man, from the mind, the will and the emotions.
The inner man or the hidden man of the heart is the spirit. The outer man is the soul and the body, because the life (Soul) of the body is the blood. However when the bible refers to the heart, most of the time it is talking of the soul.
God never intended us to live from our soul. He wanted us to live from the new creation of our spirit, Christ in us, which is in the image of God.
And we must learn how to live from our spirit. When we live in our spirit, we are learning to come into rest, learning how to allow Christ to live His life through us.
Rest is where we cease living from our soul and live from our spirit, therefore we cease from human work, and live in the flow of the Spirit, which is a government of rest.
We must learn how to rest in the Lord. No more striving, no more getting weary, because we have come to Jesus and have taken on his yoke, for his yoke is easy and his burden is light. (Matthew 11:30).
Now this rest is not inactivity, we actually labor more abundantly than all the other Christians who live in their soul, but it is Christ living through us in the flow of the Spirit through us.
But we must learn how to enter into this rest.
One of the major objectives in the Old Testament that God had with His people was to bring them into rest. And most of God’s dealing with Israel was to bring them into rest.
For instance, in Deuteronomy 12:9 it says for you are not yet come into rest into your inheritance which the Lord your God has given you.
So, Lord is talking to these people and he said now you haven’t come into your rest which is your inheritance.
Then in Deuteronomy 25:19 it says therefore it shall be when the Lord thy God gives you rest for an inheritance to possess.
It’s talking about the same thing in the book of 1 Kings 8:56 it says
56 “Blessed be the Lord, who has given rest to his people Israel according to all that he promised; not one word has failed of all his good promise that he spoke through his servant Moses.
And so, there are many other scriptures, but we see from these scriptures that Rest and the promised land were the same thing.
God said, when I bring you into the promised land, you’ll come into rest.
So, there was no rest in the wilderness. And unfortunately, most of the church lives in the wilderness. They haven’t crossed Jordan, got into the promised land and into their inheritance and into their rest.
And so, in the Old Testament, the inheritance or the promised land was compared with coming into rest, the two were always put together and God’s purpose for them was to get them into the promised land.
Unfortunately, a whole generation died in the wilderness but God eventually did get a people in. This was one of the major objectives of the Lord to bring his people, the whole nation into rest, into their inheritance, their promised land.
In Leviticus 12 it’s pictured as a Sabbath rest. One the last, seventh day of the week there is this day of rest.
In Ezekiel 44 we see a type, a picture, as the priest was not allowed to perspire.
In other words, you had to be very still in Palestine in the hot weather not to perspire and the priest’ weren’t allowed to perspire. That was difficult, the priest’s weren’t allowed to perspire, because it was a picture of activity, they were to come into rest.
Deuteronomy 12:9 speaks of the rest as their inheritance and in the promised land was milk and honey and all those things that God had promised for them, but it was a rest they had to come into.
Now when we come to the New Testament, what is our promised land?
The Bible makes it clear that in the New Testament the promised land is Jesus. He is the promised land. He is the goal, our soul being conformed into his image, this is something outward. Our mind is transformed through the flow of the Spirit into it, and then our soul is conformed to the image of Christ.
The Lord is leading us out of the wilderness, into Him.
Colossians 2: 10 and you are complete in Him, who is the head of all principality and power.
This is the legal aspect of our redemption, but we must make it the vital aspect of our redemption, by walking in it day by day through appropriating it. To appropriate it is to possess it.
It’s our promised land, complete in Him.
When Paul was writing to the Hebrew church, we need to understand the early church was a church of power, and all the gifts of the Spirit.
But writing to the Hebrew church, in Hebrews 4: 9 he was saying to these Christians, there remains a rest for them. There remains a rest, for the people of God.
In the Old Testament there was no rest in the wilderness they had to possess the land of rest and so we see that even as we come over into the New Testament. Paul was still saying you people have got to learn to enter rest.
Hebrews chapter 4 deals with that and he compares it with the children of Israel coming out of the wilderness into the promised land.
And Hebrews 4:11 tells us how.
11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. 11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience. 12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
Our soul and spirit must be divided, so that we can learn the difference in how they function. Then our soul can come under the Lordship of Jesus over our spirit, and we will experience the rest of the Lord, where it is no longer I (soul) that live, but Christ(spirit) that lives through me, and we do this by his faith being imparted to our spirit so that our soul comes into agreement through believing.
Then our soul becomes reintegrated with our spirit, and we become a whole person, we become a manifested male or female son of God in the earth.
So, Paul picks up the Old Testament analogy of the wilderness and the promised land.
But he said to the Hebrews by this time you ought to be teachers, but you are still babes in Christ, because you are still living in your soul, you are natural, mere men or women, carnal Christians.
But He said to the Hebrew church there remains a rest for you. He was talking about their daily Christian lives; you need to learn how to abide in Christ.
Now the term in Christ is used quite often through the New Testament what we are, who we are in Christ, in Him we have all kinds of things, and it’s used many times in the New Testament, but what does it mean?
We’re going to look at the writings of one specific writer in the New Testament and that is the Apostle John.
In John 15: 7 If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
He was writing and he was recording the words of Jesus. John had a great understanding of intimacy with the Lord. More than any of the other apostles, John understood intimacy. He understood the heart of God.
Jesus says, I am the true vine. My father is the gardener. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away and every branch that bears fruit he prunes it, so that it may bring forth more fruit.
Now you are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you then he says Abide in me or live in me, dwell in me. Have your existence in me and I in you, because the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it rests in the vine, abides in the vine. No more can you, except you rest or abide in me.
I am the vine; you are the branches. He that abides or rests in me, and I in him, the same is going to bring forth much fruit, for without me you can do nothing.
If you abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will and it shall be done.
When the scriptures are abiding in our mind, through the renewing of our mind, then when we ask it is not our will but His will.
So, he’s talking now about coming into rest. He said, if you come into this place, abiding in the word daily, you will ask according to my will.
If you abide in me, you will ask what you will and it shall be done. Now, do you believe this is the word of God? Okay, it’s the words of Jesus, right? Why doesn’t it work?
It works sometimes. But he says you’ll ask what you will and it shall be done. It doesn’t work because we are asking according to our will, not his.
But the qualification is if you abide in me.
Asking according to his will.
So, what we’ve got to learn is how to abide in him, which is rest.
How do we abide in him?
1 John 2:28 says, now my little children abide in Him.
Abide in Him. He’s talking about the Lord, abiding in Him. We’re told now to abide in Him.
We’re told to walk in Him, walk in the Spirit, walk in Him. We’re told to rest in Him. How do we do that? What does it mean?
We’re told to abide in the vine. And the analogy is very clear. You don’t see a branch struggling to bear fruit. That branch is just abiding in the vine.
Now your outer man (soul and body), is just a limb of your newborn spirit. Your physical body, your soul activities, are just a branch.
It’s just a branch of your spirit to bear fruit. It says the branch just abides there, lets the life of the vine come up and flow through it and it just naturally bears fruit.
It’s not independent from the inner source, which is the spirit.
We must abide in Him, but how do we do that?
The word in “ἐν in the Greek relates to abiding in Christ. In the Greek language, not just those recorded in the Bible there are 13 different words for in.
Whenever this word (in) is used for Christ, like abide in Christ, abide in Him, we live and move and have our being in him. When the word in is used with abiding in Christ it’s always the same word it’s the Greek word which is EV and it means to remain in Him, with the primary idea of rest. This is the Greek meaning to abide in Christ, to be in Him, to remain at rest within your spirit, at rest in Him.
Now, we need to understand that, to rest in Him, abide in the vine, in Him we live and move and have our very being.
1 Corinthians 6:17 the one now joining himself or herself to the Lord one spirit-Greek interlinear.
This speaks of continuous action, abiding, being constantly aware of our spirit.
Our spirit man needs to be continually with the Lord. This is the FIRST PROBLEM; Christians are not continually aware of their spirit in conscious awareness of God.
The second problem is our outer man, the soul and body get in the way, they want to do their own thing, the flesh is that union of soul and body independent of the Lord. Instead of letting Christ live through us, we are living in our soul.
So, the inner man your born-again spirit, the new creation within you, your soul and your body must come into rest and let Christ live His life through you.
Coming into rest may sound easy, but it’s not. In Hebrews 4: 9 it says, there remains a rest to the people of God.
Then in verse 10 it says, now he that has entered His rest has ceased from his own works. This refers to living in our soul, doing our own will independent of God, or working for the Lord, not co-laboring with the Holy Spirit which is different.
This is major problem in getting us to cease from our own works. That’s a major problem. So may people in the ministry are working independently of the Lord because they are deceived, thy thing they are doing God’s will but are just building their own little kingdom centered around themselves, their own personal ambition.
Hebrews says when we enter rest, he describes it, in terms of ceasing from our own works as God did from his when he created the heavens and the earth and the seventh day he rested.
Then in verse 11 he says, “Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience.”
The word disobedience in the Greek means willful unbelief, not an honest human unbelief which is not sin. It just making sure that we are hearing from God.
Most Christians live their life in the soul; they choose most things for themselves without reference to God. They just live their life out of their soul in their own way.
You need to realize that God gives us the gifts of the Spirit in our immaturity, The Corinthians had all the gifts of the Spirit operating, they came behind in know gift (1 Corinthians 1:7), yet they were carnal or fleshy Christians, babes in Christ (1 Corinthians 3:1).
God says now living in your soul must end and you’ve got to live from your spirit. Your spirit knows better than your carnal mind, our spirit knows the will of God, it contains the mind of Christ. But each word must first become a revelation to our spirit, this is what I call getting the word in your spirit, this is why God has given us the bible, we just have to read it in the original manuscript because bible translators are bias, they translate the bible according to their current belief system, that is why I translate the bible myself.
We must learn how to live out of your newborn spirit which is the new creation person and ceasing from our own works.
So, what he’s saying in these verses in Hebrews (4:1-11), is that there is a rest for you to enter.
That rest is described as ceasing from your own works, those works done in soul (self-ability).
But he said, you must be diligent to enter this rest.
Hebrew 4:11 The word diligent spoudazō means to make haste, be zealous, serious, or eager.
It’s difficult to enter that place. We must be aware of the difference between our soul and spirit and live in our spirit.
And he says you can only do it by believing (Hebrews 4:3), lest any man fall after the same example of those in the wilderness who didn’t enter in through what? Willful Unbelief or disobedience, which is rebellion.
So, he’s saying, okay, there’s rest for you in God, where your soul life does not take the ascendancy anymore. Your mind, your emotions, and your self-will. Your physical sense knowledge does not take the ascendancy anymore.
The drives in your physical body, such as hunger, self-preservation and sex and all those physical drives or ambitions don’t take the ascendancy anymore.
You are now subject to the Lordship of Jesus over your newborn spirit, the new creation.
So, the first thing we’ve got to do is stop striving to please the Lord. It is impossible to live the Christan life, only another spirit can, the spirit of Christ.
Christians have got to stop trying to please God because you can’t do it. Without what?
It’s impossible to please God without Faith. So, Christians strive all the time to please God.
They strive to appease (yielding to God’s commandments to avoid conflict or anger) God and God is saying your salvation is by grace through faith. Faith in what?
The empowering presence of God, to do what is impossible to do on the human level.
We’ve got to learn to live in our spirit which is strengthened by the Holy Spirit.
Ephesians 3: 16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man.
Allowing Christ in your spirit to live through you. Stop striving, and learn to enter His rest, which is the flow of the Spirit through us. Which is a government of Rest.
You’ve got to live from your inner man most people are not spirit conscious they’re not conscious of their reborn spirit.
Your spirit has been around for a long time, long before you became a human being. Your spirit lived in eternity with God.
You were in the heart of God before he created the heavens and the earth, He spoke you into existence as a spirit being. Then chose you in Christ before the foundation of the heavens and earth and you agreed to come to earth, so your spirit entered your mother’s womb, and your soul was created when your spirit enter the physical womb of your mother.
Your spirit then became limited to a human body. God chose for you to be sent from eternity into the physical body which you have now.
God chose that your spirit would be sent to this earth, we don’t know how long your spirit lived with God in eternity past, but God chose to send your spirit into this earth into this physical body, which put your spirit in a restricted place being surrounded by your soul and body.
And there is a purpose for that because your newborn spirit can learn certain things. It had to come into human form to experience certain things and to go through certain things in this life in preparation for the next life in the ages to come, which is beyond this world and beyond this human life.
So, your newborn spirit is housed in a human body but is also seated in the heavenly places in Christ at the same time. Our soul interprets what our spirit senses in the heavenly places in Christ, but also what your physical body senses.
So, our soul has been formed by nature (what you have inherited (DNA) from your natural parents). Nurture (how you were raised by your parents, your peers, your schoolteachers) and trauma (all the negative things that have happened to you living in a fallen world).
Therefore, our soul has been fractured and basically has lived by self-will and must be renewed when we are born again.
The new birth is a new creation that never existed before, it is a whole race of new creatures born from the very DNA of YHWH conceived inside of their spirits, (Christ or the Word of God). They have become divine humans. Their spirit is divine, but their soul is human.
So now we must learn how to strengthen our spirit, “or Christ in our spirit”, so that the Christ in us can grow to a full mature male or female son of God.
Our soul has been trained from the outside in by physical sense knowledge and has been in charge of our life before we were born again.
The whole problem is that our body is no longer to take control of our life. Our soul is not to take control of our life. Our life is out of divine order, it is body, soul and then spirit. It must become spirit, soul and then body. Our spirit must be built up and grow, so that it can take dominion over our soul and body.
But only our will (which is a function of our soul) will allow Christ to live through us. You must choose to allow Christ to live his life through you and then you will come into rest where all the strivings of the mind and the emotions come into rest.
And to abide in Him means to abide in the consciousness of your born-again spirit joined to the Lord, consciousness of your spirit in connection with God.
It says this takes diligence “to make haste, be zealous, serious, or eager” because ever since you were a little child, you’ve been trained to do just the exact opposite. And so, you’ve had 20, 30, 40, 50 years of training to do the opposite of what your newborn spirit desires.
Making the switch is very difficult. One, you have seen it. Then you must begin to enter it. We must stop striving, and live from the inner man, not the outer man.
It’s a very subtle thing. Striving to do good is very religious. We’re only going to make it by faith, by revelation, then believing which takes hold of that revelation in God. That’s the only way we’re going to make it.
John 14:10 he says, “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works.”
So, Jesus was saying, look, just as his spirit was in connection with the Lord constantly. He was in the Father and the Father was in him.
If you people would learn to do this he said this is what would happen verily I say unto you that he that believeth in me, the works that I do shall you do also and greater works.
He said if you grasp this truth about how I live, how I relate to the Father, he said if you relate to me this way you’ll do the same things I do, but even greater works than I do.
Then he says (John 14: 13 And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.
Whatsoever you shall ask in my name I will do it if you ask anything in my name I will do it. I want to tell you through the years the number of times I looked at that scripture and said God that is not right. Have you ever felt like that?
Because a lot of things I asked for didn’t happen and I’d come back and say God you’re not a man, you cannot lie. And says whatever I ask, it must come to pass.
But I never saw the condition, if you abide in me and my words abide in you. I only saw if you ask. You take his words in you and ask according to his word which is now governing you, and it will come to pass.
The key is in verse 10 “Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority; but the Father who dwells in Me does the works”.
Your newborn spirit does the asking. It’s what the new creation joined to the Lord is asking comes to pass.
That which originates in God, those prayers which originate in God are prayers which are answered.
They come from the inner man, the new creation. And so he’s talking about Abiding in the Lord.
So, chapter 15:7 “If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you”.
When we abide in the Lord we become sensitive to His Spirit, we become sensitive to His voice, we become sensitive to His feelings, His moods, His movements and we begin to pick up what He’s feeling, what He wants of us. You become sensitive to the Holy Spirit. Your spirit in contact with the Holy Spirit.
You listen to your spirit. You walk in obedience to the Holy Spirits leading. You do the things that the Lord requires of you.
Jesus said I don’t do anything unless I hear it first from the Father, I don’t ask anything unless I hear it from the Father.