(Photo: Javon Swaby/Pexels)
“We who believe do enter into rest, but they do not, as God said: ‘Then I swore in my anger: Into my rest they will certainly not enter’.” – Hebrews 4:3 (AFR83)
We just celebrated Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday. Well, for many it was a wonderful getaway weekend and there is no fault to be found with that.
The year has sped by and one cannot believe that we are already in the middle of April. It feels as if life is getting faster and faster and one finds it difficult to keep up. So breaking away and getting some rest is very necessary.
The Bible also speaks of rest. God has prepared for us rest in Christ Jesus.
The people of God in the Old Testament are precisely reproached that, despite the invitation, they did not enter the rest.
The rest that the Bible speaks of is not a physical rest in the first place, but a spiritual-emotional rest. It is on the one hand rest from sin and injustice and on the other hand rest in the knowledge that our names are written in the book of life and of the Lamb.
For South Africa, this means respite from strained interpersonal relationships, prejudice and fear that are brought to the fore. It is rest from all forms of criminality, injustice, corruption, crime and violence.
South Africa is battered by all the blows that citizens have to endure in this society. Society is, in the words of Mattheus, “tired and overloaded”. In the midst of such circumstances, God comes to us with an invitation to enter his rest.
This is an active rest as God has completed his work of creation and is resting. However, he is still entertainingly busy with us and has not turned his back on us so that we just have to “see and be done”. God is intensely involved in the welfare and ways of his people.
The rest to which God invites us is an active rest. It is a rest that invites other people to rest together, travel together, build together, create and recreate.
However, it starts with personal rest. You cannot invite other people to something you do not experience yourself.
Only when this rest has come true in your life do you have the energy and conviction to invite others to share the journey with you.
Finally, when God sees fit we will enter eternal rest.
We don’t want to look for and not find the people who form part of our frame of reference there.
Make sure they will be part of the company.
- ToekomsVenster is a daily message to equip individual believers with practical faith skills. Small group accompaniments, DVDs and functional sermon sketches are available from Drienie ([email protected]) or visit www.toekomsvenster.co.za
