Rest

"So, again, we turn to God inside."

WE ARE NOT in a battle to win a war, but we ARE in a fight. The devil wanted a battle. He didn’t get one. He was defeated by a man who chose to die. Jesus’ fight was not to fight but to do the will of the Father. But He knew that when He died, the Spirit who lives in Him without measure (John 3:34), would carry the weight of sin, and He’d be alive in His spirit man. He is God, united perfectly with God. They are inseparable. There would be no battle. Because of His death, Satan was condemned and Life is now everywhere.

You see, Jesus didn’t deserve to die. He never sinned. He stated this in John 14:39. “Because the [evil] ruler of this world comes: and he has no power over me (BBE).” Jesus died on purpose, as our substitute, but in not deserving judgment, like we did, God returned Him back to Life. Death has no more claim on Him (Romans 6:9). God the Father and the Spirit being “exceeding abundantly above (Ephesians 3:20)”, of course did more than enough. They gave QUALITY of Life, eternal life, and QUANITITY of life, it’s infinite. They x’d out our sins, nailing them to the cross, erased, and spread the LIFE of our loving Savior all over the place.

“He has chosen to forget that we have not obeyed all his rules. He has taken away the list of all the wrong things that we have done. He should have punished us because of that list. But instead, it is like he fixed that list to Christ’s cross. So, he destroyed that list.” (Colossians 2:14, EasyEnglish)

Our fight is to trust God above all else. Our fight is to love people and show them Jesus. Our fight is to keep darkness under our feet (Ephesians 1:22). It is a fight of the mind and of the body. It is not spiritual warfare. The Holy Spirit in us is healing for our thinking. He is health for our body. He knows us, inside and out, and is here with us every minute of every day. We must rest in Him and allow Him to work. We must stop battling an enemy who has been completely defeated (Colossians 2:15). What causes our fight is sin that he wielded and death that it causes. Jesus’ death lifted off our sins (Isaiah 53:4), but sin itself persists, if we allow it. If we give it authority over us in our thinking and our words. So, again, we turn to God inside. He is peace, shalom, well-being. Facing the cross, Jesus preached peace (John 14:27). Risen from the dead, He became rest.

The devil wants a battle. He isn’t going to get one. If we stick with Jesus. The Holy Spirit grows peace within us (Galatians 5:22). The Father is great peace. On the seventh day, He rested, and there, with Him, surrounded by His goodness, we wave goodbye to battle. We turn our backs on war and lay the fight the enemy is trying to stir within us onto the Word of God which cuts like a sword (Ephesians 6:17).

“We don’t use worldly weapons designed to kill the body or destroy physical structures, nor do we use the world’s weapons of lies, distortion, manipulation, deceit, flattery, coercion, sanctions, or trickery. On the contrary, our weapons are from God and have divine power to free the mind, heal the heart, and demolish Satan’s stronghold of fear, lies and selfishness.” (2 Corinthians 10:4, Remedy)

“There remains then a Sabbath-rest—a rest in the evidence and truth of the character of God—which heals and transforms the people of God; for anyone who rests in the achievements of Christ rests from working to save themself, just as God rested from his work.” (Hebrews 4:9-10, Remedy)

Photo by Lasse Møller on Unsplash


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Suzanne D. Williams, Author
www.suzannedwilliams.com
www.feelgoodromance.com