EFFORT WITH FAITH

I think we often hit “end call” or “end meeting” with God and yet He is still in the room. We turn away and take our faith with us. We remember the “call” but we let it quit calling us. We become disconnected and scattered as a flood of other voices enter in. And there is no greater distraction than unbelief. And in response, we may even work ourselves to the bone because we haven’t absorbed what He said and effort to enter His rest. We only know effort with our work. And God calls us to effort with faith. Though God has unlimited power and we do not, that’s not why He rested from His work in Genesis 2.

There is a moment that shifts in creating where it becomes revealing. There is a stopping point, not because time or energy runs out...but because something deeper is filling it. In that pause, we worship, we reflect, we recall the good He has done, how good He is, and lean into His completion. I wonder what Adam & Eve thought the day God rested. It was both a completion and a beginning of a whole new world. I wonder what it was like to see His joy. And I wonder later what Joshua thought with his eyes toward the promise and all God was doing before his eyes. Faith sets the table of God’s feast in the wilderness as much as in Eden. Joshua knew God’s rest and welcomed its fullness even from a distance because he had faith. God entered in so we could enter His rest. We just follow His lead.

You can’t survive the wilderness from just a memory of being delivered from Egypt. You trust in the God who invited you into that rest in Him. Into that saving, into that refuge, into that faithfulness of Him leading you to His promise. You rest in Him & His Word.

The effort is faith, not “I’ll take it from here, God” or expend energy challenging His care. It’s to be aware and wholly given to Him to create a new work through that engaged dependence and remember what He has done. This rest leads to faith in the Living God and what is true. It’s reliance. By His Spirit, it’s the power grace unlocked that disarms the rebel heart and humbles us to walk with Him, obeying His voice and watching what He produces in a sabbath heart who will trust His call.

(thinking on Hebrews 3&4)