WE NEED "THE REST" THAT WE FIND IN THE LORD!

There remains therefore a rest for the people of God. For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall according to the same example of disobedience…
Hebrews 4:9-11a
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The salvation we receive through Jesus Christ means much more than eternal life. Jesus wants us to give Him our burdens, worries, fears, needs, and He gives us His rest in return, as we read in Matthew 11:28-29, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”
 
The Lord wants us to choose to enter into His rest. We must want to lay everything at His feet and relax, trusting that He cares for us. When we choose to praise the Lord, to thank Him for who He is and what He has done for us, we can enter into His presence and be filled with the Holy Spirit. We need to continually do this on a daily basis, because the challenges of everyday life can drain and exhaust us. And an exhausted Christian is more easily irritable, and more vulnerable to temptation. Isn’t it the truth? We are the ones who limit the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in us. Our heavenly Father fills us with as much as we allow Him to. The more we thirst and seek to have fellowship with the Lord, the more we receive.
 
King David understood the importance of spending time to soak in God’s presence as shown in Psalms 16:11b, "In Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore." The joy that fills our hearts when we spend time with the Lord, transforms us and the deeper we understand what we have in Jesus, the greater our joy can be. This is the joy of salvation, of belonging to the heavenly family. We no longer doubt the love of God, and realize that He is in us permanently, no matter what we go through and that He provides all we need to become what He has created us to be.
 
The Lord has the most wonderful blessings and perfect plan prepared for every single one of us. But in order to enter into His rest, we must stop struggling to solve everything on our own and give it all unto Him. If we follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit, learning to listen to His voice and obey Him, we will be able to take possession of all the best that the Lord has for us.
 
Sometimes our dream vacation can turn out to be an ordeal, but the vacation we can have in the Lord, on a daily basis, by entering into His rest, relaxes us, frees us from burdens, fears, frustrations, stress and physical fatigue. In trusting that our heavenly Father is doing everything for our best, we rest and find peace. We can have a fulfilled and fruitful life if Jesus is truly our Lord and we realize that He loves us and never leaves us or forsakes us!
 
We can rest when we know that the universe functions just fine without our help. We must not lose our peace worrying about what will be or not, and what will happen locally or globally. On the contrary, if we spend time more daily with the Lord, we can rely more and more on His love, help and protection, and will be much more able to keep our peace, sleep better, and be more physically and spiritually rested. Let us enter and remain in the rest of our Lord!
 

Carmen Pușcaș
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