Hebrews 4:8-10: Now if Joshua had succeeded in giving them this rest, God would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come. So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God. For all who have entered into God’s rest have rested from their labors, just as God did after creating the world.
We demonstrate our complete trust in God by our obedience to His commands.
I have written many times about God being with us, but today I want to discuss us walking with God. Enoch walked with God, and God took him so that he wouldn’t see death. The writer of Hebrews tells us, “By faith, Enoch walked with God.” Every day that you and I keep the commandments of God and ignore human fears, lusts, and weaknesses, we are literally walking by faith. As we walk with God by faith, we’re resisting the temptation to allow our hearts to lead our lives.
As we continue to walk with God through our obedient faith, we will become sensitive to the presence of the Holy Spirit with us in a very real way. Now let’s digress for a moment. The Israelites struggled constantly with a lack of confidence when it came to trusting the truth that, indeed, God was with them. Why did they struggle with this issue, yet Moses didn’t struggle? Moses walked with God, but the Jews refused to obey God because of hardened hearts of unbelief. Psalms 103 tells us plainly that Moses knew the ways of God, but Israel simply knew the acts of God. We can only know the ways of God by obeying Him through our faith.
Now let’s discuss your “MOUNTAINS.” Whenever the Israelites would run into a life-threatening situation (like a lack of food or water), they were immediately ready to turn their backs on God, but this wasn’t so with Moses. Remember, Moses walked with God through obedience, but the Jews hardened their hearts to His voice. You see, unbelief blinded the Jews to the consequences of walking contrary to the ways of God. But we see what unbelief does to a person once calamity hits. It causes them to feel as though God has forsaken or abandoned them. Moses never struggled with these feelings because HE WALKED WITH GOD! If we obey, through faith, then we are walking with God, and when trouble comes, we won’t struggle with the issues of unbelief—issues that cause us to feel as if God has forgotten about us.
Once you get past the point of struggling over whether or not to obey God’s way, then you have begun to enter the rest of God. You will know when you have entered into His rest when you can have complete peace in the midst of a horrific storm. Instead of retreating in unbelief because of the adverse winds, you will be still until you see the salvation of the Lord. Are you simply a Christian in name, or are you a Christian who is daily walking with God? Jesus tells us in John 8 that He was never alone because the Father was with Him. He said, “I do always those things which please my Father.”
Hebrews 10:36-39: Patient endurance is what you need now, so that you will continue to do God’s will. Then you will receive all that He has promised. “For in just a little while, the Coming One will come and not delay. And my righteous ones will live by faith. But I will take no pleasure in anyone who turns away.” But we are not like those who turn away from God to their own destruction. We are the faithful ones, whose souls will be saved.
Amen and Amen. —submitted by Asa Dockery, US