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What it Means to Enter into God’s Rest Part II: Learning to Depend on God

It is an honorable thing to depend on God, and to say to God in our hearts, “I don’t know how, when, where, or even why, but I trust you. Lord, I know you will bring me to an expected end.”

One of the greatest lessons in learning to depend on God is learning that he truly is the one who supplies our need in his time, and in his season. During dependence on God, we relinquish all of our work that often seeks to manipulate a situation to bring about God’s promise on our own terms instead of his. Often, manipulation in order to get God’s promise stems from a spirit of fear which God has not given to us. (See what is a sound mind blog).

Dependence means: the state of relying on or being controlled by someone or something else. (Google definition)

The state of relying on or needing someone or something for aid, support, or the like. (Dictionary.com)

There is a boldness and a confidence that arises from depending on the Lord. The more we become rested secure in Christ; the more bold we will become. The best example of resting in God through dependence on him that always comes to mind periodically before God calls me to enter into his rest is when God provided manna from heaven. God gave specific instructions to his people saying:
Gather as much as was needed to eat for the one day. He specifically said not to gather over, but some of the Israelites did not obey, but horded up the bread as if the God who bought the miracle to pass by bringing the bread in the first place could not do it again. (Exodus 16:16-20).
Those that gathered too much had none over, and the extra that they gathered became rotten. They were those who did not trust in God’s ability to provide for them what they needed again. They were the hit it and quit it saints, who only wanted to use God for what they needed, and not to have a continual relationship with him.

God promised to meet them out there again to continue to give them manna from heaven. Manna in the Hebrew means, “What is it?” This meaning whatever it is that we need God will provide that need for us, but it will only be found in him not in greediness, or seeking to use God for gain, but we must seek him.

This is why when Jesus taught his disciples to pray; he told them to pray on this wise: “Give us our daily bread.” Receiving what we need from God is a daily activity not something to be done once in a blue moon. God wants relationship with us. He wants to build our trust and confidence in him. He wants to show himself to us using our circumstances. He wants daily fellowship with us.

Bread is significant for bare sustenance, the focal point of what we need to live and survive. Jesus is called, “Bread from heaven.” He wants to be our bare sustenance for what we need. He is able to do this and be this in our lives, but we have to acknowledge him in this. We do this by entering into his rest. We enter into his rest through believing in him no matter what it looks like, rehearsing and speaking his word consistently, and refraining from seeking to manipulate our own desires to come to pass on our own accord. Instead, we wait for the promise in trust, and in thanksgiving.

Revelations 12:11 – And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.

I love the above scripture that helps me to rest in God. We have already overcome because of what Jesus did for us. We just have to allow the confession out of our mouths to line up with what God says about us which will build our faith and cause us to rest.

There is a great temptation to complain or to speak negative when we are in transition or a place of having to be dependent on God because things that come easily to others do not come as easily to those who are required to depend on God. Simply because we have to be an example of this word that we carry, teach, and preach. We have to know that God is enough. We have to be able to share with our neighbors that it was God alone who bought us through. We don’t get the luxury of doing things the easy way.

But we do get the greater reward of seeing the hand of God move miraculously in our own lives, and in the lives of others because of our testimony. Also, I personally believe for those that had to go through more in this sense, God will out perform when he does bring the promise to pass. There is a scripture that talks about those who have had to give up certain things for the sake of the kingdom of God, and how they will receive a 100 fold blessing in this life and in the life to come. That is what I believe will be the result of those who rest in the Lord.
Truly I tell you, Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields–along with persecutions–and in the age to come eternal life. – Mark 10:29-30

Those who give up the above, give up natural comforts for the comfort of the Lord, and God will outshine every time with his favor and hand in the lives of those who forsake all to rest in and follow Jesus Christ.

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