Take Your Break

Take Your Break

Are you ready to take your break? It was never God’s design for us to sweat (literally and figuratively). Your employment ought to be a reflection of the purpose God has for you. And if your job is manual labor, God’s grace will be more than sufficient for you and you won’t toil.

Hebrews 4:9-11 – This passage tells us that the one who walks in God’s grace discontinues his own labor. As a believer of God’s Word and one who walks by faith, you’ll understand that the rest of God is available to you today. Our work to enter God’s rest isn’t physical; but rather we are to make an earnest effort toward stopping our own works. The Bible tells us we must be diligent in ceasing from our own schemes, plans, and efforts. Our Biblical example of disobedience is found in Exodus 33. Unbelief and doubt prevented the Children of Israel from entering the Promised Land. Only Joshua and Caleb entered, the others perished.

The rest of God is not just stopping your work. A lot of believers are frustrated and are laboring because they’re out of place not doing what God would have them to do. God tells us up front that He will make the way. If you’re unhappy, ask yourself why you’re working the job you’re working?

1. God’s rest is a place of guaranteed success (or victory). What does this definition mean to you?
Matthew 11:28-30 – Jesus is The Rest. He is the fulfillment of all of God’s Word. Bottom line, entering God’s rest is coming to know the living Christ in your life. The stronger leads the way once you’re yoked together. Jesus tells us his yoke is easy, so why are so many believers struggling with a hard life? They’ve been deceived into believing something else, foregoing the yoke of Christ to work their own way out. Peace is intertwined with rest. The spiritual side of ending our own works means all religious, ceremonial, and ritualistic works to be righteous with God must cease. Christ is the righteousness of God, and in Him we are made righteous. How can we add to or take away from this? We are made in Christ’s likeness and image, and therefore more than conquerors (Hebrews 1:1-3; Galatians 3:29; Romans 8:17).

2. Unbelief is what stops a person from entering. Unbelief is disobedience, rebellion and stubbornness – a conscious turning away from your known truth. Entertaining doubt leads to unbelief. Doubt becomes foolishness when you entertain it and allow your present, problematic, challenging, adverse situations to overshadow the true certainty of God’s promises to you.
Hebrews 3:12-14 – We are not “partakers of God” because we say we are. The rest of God is not automatic. An evil heart of unbelief turns back from the truth. Exhort one another! Close ranks and bear one another up. Some of you will prevent all of you from going where God intends all of us to go! Procrastination is the enemy’s tool.

Sometimes you have to fire yourself! Write down all your activities (friends, clubs, associations) and ask the Lord from your heart what you should be doing. Allow God to reveal to you what you should be doing each step of the way. God gives us the grace and mercy to meet our obligations. Once you get a taste of rest, you won’t go back to working! You get the reward of your inheritance. Hebrews 11:6 (Berith’s hallmark Scripture) tells us that God rewards our faith. Stop watching your brothers and sisters in Christ drown in their own fruitless efforts! Lift one another up.

3. Living by faith guarantees that we enter.

Take It To Heart

In this message, we discussed taking it to heart. It is an opportunity for us to give ourselves a spiritual check-up. In the Bible, the heart is where your mind meets your spirit. Here’s the critical question: Are you a drifter or are you a person of purpose?

In 2 Corinthians 13:5, you are told to “examine yourselves “as to whether you are in the faith.” You examine yourself to determine if you are in faith not. You are not in faith just because you say that you are in faith. You have to test yourself and pass the test.

If you are born again, then Christ is in you. The question is: Do you know that? If you do, then you are called to live by faith not by your five senses, not by what you perceive and not by what comes through your mind. In other words, you live by God’s Word and by your relationship with Him. That’s what “are [you] in the faith” means. If you are in Christ, there should be fruit in your life that reflects that you are in Christ.

You have to examine yourself to determine whether you are in Christ because the risk is that you will be “disqualified” (2 Corinthians 13:5). God doesn’t disqualify us. You must test yourself to determine if you are disqualified. This is something that God leaves to us on the honor system.

Some people have the attitude that once they work everything out in their lives then they will serve God. God doesn’t work that way. If you are doing everything you know to do and things still aren’t working out, that’s not right. That’s not God’s way. God works with those who obey Him. It’s false religion to expect God to do everything for us. When you are walking in the will of God, things are supposed to work out. You can’t always blame the enemy for things going wrong. That’s why it’s important for you to “consider your ways.” (Haggai 1:5-7) “Consider your ways” literally means lay your heart on this or consider what you are doing. This is where your mind meets your spirit. Putting off the work of God in order to take care of you will lead to poverty and lack. You are not intended to take care of yourself. You are intended to depend on God because God, the Father, takes care of His children.

How do you check or test yourself? How do you know if you are drifting or staying on course? For this test, you have to look at yourself in the mirror, and the mirror you are looking into is God, through His Word (James 1:22-25). The “perfect law of liberty” is another word for mirror or the Word. If you stay with God, look in the mirror He has made and continue in His Word, then you will do some work. The only person you can deceive is yourself, which is why you have to look in the mirror. Being a hearer of the Word and not a doer means you are deceiving yourself. If you are doer of the Word, you will be blessed. What you do is spiritual. If something is truly spiritual, then the natural cannot contain it. It’s impossible because the spirit is more real than the natural. Every problem that a person has comes from him/her slipping into thinking that the natural is more real than the spiritual. That’s why it is so important for you to test yourself to see if you are doing the work God gave us through His Word. If you become a doer, there will be no more frustration and you will be blessed.

The parable told in Luke 15:11-32 is commonly called “The Prodigal Son.” As you will see, it is more appropriately called “The Prodigal Father.” Prodigal means lavish or not stingy – that’s what the father is. In this story, you are either one of the two sons and the father is God.

The younger son saw blessings as something owed to him (Luke 15:11-12). He didn’t want to wait for his father to die to receive his inheritance. The younger son demanded his inheritance and his father complied by dividing it between his two sons. The younger son had a sense of entitlement, he wanted immediate gratification and he thought blessing were due to him. Do you think that blessings are due you? The younger son didn’t want anything to interfere with his plan. In other words, he didn’t want home in his house (Luke 15:13). He wanted to be his own master (God). This is called idolatry. He did not want his father to look at him doing what he was about to do.

You can leave far from Jesus with your heart (Matthew 15:8). The only thing the younger son wanted was immediate gratification. He was coveting. He wanted the seen over the unseen, and he gave no thought to the future. He wasted his inheritance by loose living. You cannot reap what you eat (Luke 15:14). Because of his greed, the younger son gave no thought to the future and he suffered for it. God expects for you to sow out of what He has blessed you with because tomorrow is coming. The younger son became a slave by enslaving himself (Luke 15:15-16).

In the midst of his dire situation, the younger son considered his ways (Luke 15:17-18), meaning he took it to heart. He went back to the mirror. He said that he sinned against “heaven” (God) and his father. In other words, he repented. This is where you want to be. You want to hear God call you “son,” not servant. A son implies an inheritance. Religion keeps people out of their inheritance. The younger son humbled himself. He “rose.” (Luke 15:20) In other words, he was a doer of the Word. He repented, turned around and changed his actions. The younger son had his mind on eternity (Luke 15:21). It is God’s goodness that causes us to repent. The younger son received the best robe, a ring and sandals for his feet. He was clothed in the garments of righteousness (Luke 15:22). The fatted calf was an offering for his sin (Luke 15:23).

Separation from God is death. The younger son got his heart’s desire. The Father will not chase people in rebellion. Both sons had everything as long as they were with their father. Neither of them loved their father. They didn’t take it to heart. Are you foolish in the face of God’s love? Obedience only happens when it comes from the heart. When we totally trust ourselves to God, He is totally responsible for us (Luke 15:24).

As God Is, So Are We

Even though there is growing upheaval in the world, believers should not act like everyone else in the world. As believers, our lives should reflect the statement from 1 John 4:17 (NKJV), “as He is, so are we in this world.” We should not be conditioned to this world. God doesn’t promise fair, but the world doesn’t have a chance against believers. God set everything up so that we know the end from the beginning. As God is, so are we! This is why Jesus came. This is why Jesus called us His body. As the head goes, so goes the body. The body of Christ shouldn’t be paralyzed because as the head goes, so goes the body.

The Bible is God’s Word to believers. It is a covenant between God and His children. A covenant defines your inheritance. It tells you what you can do, what you should do and what you shouldn’t do. A covenant also tells you who you are. As believers, we should declare: “I am who God says I am. I can do what God says I can do. My inheritance is everything He says it is.” If we try to amend any of these truths, then we are not with God. That’s what religion does. If I am humble in spirit and lowly in heart, then as He is, so am I. People lie, cheat, steal, etc. because they don’t believe they are like God. Believers are as God is and, therefore, should act that way “in this world.” Religion tells people to act a certain way so that they can be like God, which doesn’t work because it’s backward. God is, so as He is, so are we. This is not about faith. It’s practical. It’s about how we live.

God made us in His image and likeness. We are a reflection of Him. If we say that we abide in Him (1 John 2:6), then we should act like it. We should walk just like He did. God left us an example to follow – Jesus. God identified Himself with us so that we could be just like Him. This is the acid test between religion and the truth. Jesus told us to be like Him, which means that we should do as He did. Anything contrary to this is a lie. It is very critical what believers hear (receive) because it will impact how we walk with God (Colossians 2:6). We can never rise above what we hear in our walk with God. The image that we have of Christ is crucial. Do we have a religious or biblical idea of Christ? What image are we giving the world of Christ? We are the only Christ people in the world are going to see. God will unlock blessings for us if we unlock them for someone else. The darker it becomes in the world, the brighter Christians should be.

If we are in Christ, we are not human (2 Corinthians 5:17). Man has nothing to do with this. We are supernatural. God gave us His power to become His children. This has nothing to do with the mind, the intellect, philosophy, etc. We are a “new creation.” We are born of God, not the flesh.

We live here, but we’re not from here (Romans12:1, 2; Galatians 2:20). If we live like we are from here, then we are subject to what “here” gives us. Ambassadors are not subject to the laws of the country where they reside; they are subject to the laws of the country where they come from. Ambassadors have “diplomatic immunity” from the laws of where they reside. Jesus lived by the laws of where He was from -- His source, which is God. Likewise, believers are not subject to the laws of this world because we are new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17). We have diplomatic immunity. The government doesn’t determine our living, God does. God’s Word should be the first and final authority in a believer’s life.

We have an example to follow (Matthew 10:24, 25; John 4:34; 8:29). We have to make it up in our minds that it is enough for us to be like Jesus. God gave us instructions to fulfill; therefore we should be about pleasing Him. If we dare to do those things that please God, he will never leave us alone. We are to live by the divine rights and privileges that are eternal and supernatural (Ephesians 2:19). We are not servants (slaves). Jesus called us His “friends” (John 15: 15), so we should adjust ourselves to Him. God dealt with us mentally, spiritually and physically. We don’t have anything to worry about (Ephesians 6:10-11; Psalm 91). We have to ask ourselves what image we are projecting to the world of who Christ is.

Totally obey the Lord, and He’ll be totally responsible for what happens to you (Ephesians 5:1, 2; Matthew 6:31-33). Our obedience is the sacrifice. We should depend on God to tell us what we should be doing. Jesus did what He did because He loved the Father. Loving God enables us to walk in love (Ephesians 5:12). If we love God, we are going to love people. Trust the Lord because safety comes from the Lord (Proverbs 21:30-31). As He is, so are we because greater is He who is in us than He who is in the word (1 John 4:1-4).