Church in the Peak Podcast

9th May 2010 - Phil Hardy - Restful Faith

Phil spoke from Hebrews 4:1-13 about how our faith can lead to us resting in God.

Faith finds rest in God. We are all a bit like Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army, running around shouting “Don’t Panic!!” while getting more and more panicky. Some people suffer from panic attacks. When we get panicky, we look for places of solace and some of those places are not good for us – comfort eating, addiction, shutting ourselves away, etc. This passage refers to a rest for God’s people. God has promised rest for us always, regardless of what circumstances we are going through.

Some people love wallowing in self-pity. We are not nice to be around when we are like this. God does not want us to be like this. The only way of resting in God is through faith. Faith leads to obedience. However, we must be careful not to put our trust in what God hasn’t said. And when giving prophecy, we mustn’t add our own bits to it.

God promised rest for the Israelites but their fear robbed them of the rest and, instead of entering the Promised Land in about 11 days, they wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years!

We need to get back to the Word to see what God has said. He has said that he will never leave us. This is true whatever situation we find ourselves in. We need to be obedient to what Jesus says. “We have faith in what Jesus says because it is Jesus who said it”. (Smith-Wigglesworth). Everyone puts their faith in something, even non-Christians … even if they don’t know what it is they are putting their faith in!

We all want to live in peace, but we will only find this peace in God. The Israelites gave up on God’s promises because of a lack of faith. Faith perseveres on into the place of rest. We must not take things for granted. We should press on into what God has for us. The Israelites became so familiar with the miracle of the daily supply of manna that they started moaning about it and demanding something else. When the spies came back from the Promised Land, the brought with them huge fruits etc but even so the Israelites panicked because of the size of the occupants.

We often panic the most at night. With the Israelites, their wilderness camp was set up is such a way that everyone, no matter where on the site they were, they could see the pillar of fire of God’s presence. This was a great reminder for them. “We must not despise in the dark what God has promised in the light.” To get back into the light, we need to get into the presence of God. God will fulfil all his promises and he has plans and promises for all of us.

We need to be obedient to the word of God. True faith is living by what we believe. Sometimes it may feel as though we are doing this through gritted teeth, but even then God will still meet us. We must not let our unbelief and disobedience get in the way of our true rest with Jesus. This is what the Israelites did and the writer of Hebrews uses the Israelites as a warning to us. We have a hope and a future so we shouldn’t be looking back at how good things may have been (which is what the Israelites did: “Let’s go back to Egypt” etc, even though they had been working as slaves in Egypt).

A small lack of faith can have huge consequences – i.e. an 11 day walk taking 40 years. Addictions often start with small things and progress. It is the same with trusting God. We start trusting God in small things and then we can trust him in bigger things. And our small trust can have a massive Kingdom impact. We have access to the throne of heaven and can hear the heart of God. God has absolutely everything that we need and he will provide it for us. We need to anchor ourselves in Jesus when the storms of life come along. Only when we are anchored in Jesus, can we rejoice in times of suffering (as we are exhorted to do in James 1).

We will never understand everything that God has for us and how it will work out. But we know that he will take us on a journey and it will bless us. A lesson from the Israelites is that the more we fight against God and moan, the longer the journey may take! Even in the face of disappointment, we need to trust God. We must press in to God, no matter what happens.

Questions:

Today I looked a Faith and Resting and what Hebrews teaches us of a rest from God for us to enter despite our circumstance and situation. A rest that God wants us to know and enjoy and when we enter that rest we disarm the very things that causes us unrest and to fear and panic in the night.

1. How do you see the relationship between faith and rest?

2. How do you best fuel an ambition to lead a restful life?

3. What’s getting in the way of rest for you?

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” ~Jesus Matt.11:28

Listen now! (0:45min / 11MB)