"'There is a rest for the people of God,' it says in Hebrews 4. This is something I would simply define as coming into an inner rest by knowing an inner upholding of Christ, which becomes the center out of which we live our lives.
"There are many ways of expressing how it comes. It comes first as a knowing, perhaps, that we are kept. That we are sustained.
"It comes when we realize that He told us He would be in us a well of water springing up, and that we would never thirst again. One day I had to say, 'Well, I guess you’ve done that, since you promised it. So you are an always running spring in the middle of me, flowing up in me and spilling out of me all over the place.'
"It comes when the Spirit quickens in us that we cannot do anything of ourselves, that our only sufficiency is in Christ, and no other, or no-thing else.
"It comes when we realize that He redeemed me to be His life expressed in the world and that He will accomplish His work as He pleases in my life. He will bring about His promises, like He brought Isaac at the appointed time and even worked Abraham’s self-effort attempt to make the promise happen, into the plan.
"It comes all those ways and more, but the rest comes, and we realize that in His rest, we can finally relax in Him. The job (of upholding us) has always been His, but we have had to test our mettle so that we could come to the same conclusion, too.
"Temptations still come. Humanity is still very much human. But love becomes the predominant operation in our sight, and we begin to marvel at how the Father is so continuously and perfectly in time and place bringing light out of darkness and rest in the middle of a storm in a boat on a lake. He IS rest in the middle of us.
"One more thing about rest. It is all inner consciousness. I heard Norman [Grubb] say that a lot, and he had power when he spoke. I would 'hear' it. Still, it took a while before it settled in me.
"But it does settle. The Spirit does it. Somehow, there is a direct connection back to the stillness that is before all things, and in all things we find it alike. It is equal in distress and celebration. It is equal in joy and sorrow, and even equal in life and death. Because we find in it all, in all that 'moves,' (which is everything in creation, since nothing can exist or be 'manifest' without motion), it is all an equal out-flowing of God, Who is above all, through all, and in all.
"That is the 'inner' consciousness of the Spirit, and it is out of this within, that our life flows outward. It does not necessarily reveal itself clearly in our outer consciousness, but the Spirit’s settling in our faith, keeps it going within, though we may put no conscious thought to it, nor even be at outer peace. But nevertheless, 'I live yet not I, but Christ,'--Who we are, inwardly, is Who we are!
"Coming to that faith by the Spirit, is the rest of God. We may be running 100 mph on the outside. Living in the rest of God, since it is the rest OF GOD, might make us busier than we’ve ever been! Because the 3rd level of the Cross, the Cross in us for others (which is our dying daily), is turned outward, no more focusing on ourselves since we are kept, and life now is flowing out, not self-reflective inward.
"No reason to not let the love flow, and what life it is, to be in the river!
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